Dashed

Love at first sight and cemented through the seconds minutes years, not quite a decade.

No thrashing or crashing or smashing would dissolve such a love.

But gossip ah gossip and worse yet, pride.
Pride is something so easily diluted by honesty and recounted facts but yet somehow has the weight required to pulverise love.

An old man once lay in hospital, death close at hand.
He was, in his heyday, the most popular man in town.
A pillar of the community.
When it came to the bit,
The bit that we all dread,
The bit we all deny for as long as we wake,
How many of his friends attended his bedside?
Not even a handful.
His family alone could be counted upon.
His daughter distraught and bemused by the treatment of her father led a life in the absence of friends that might abandon her later.

I grabbed the blossom on the trees and swallowed them whole,
Enraptured by the gifts which life might offer.

While it might be naive to presume that I shan't choke on even one petal I'll continue to drink my chosen medicine.

A disappointment in a sea of gifts will not be a lesson I'll hold close to my heart.