La Dispute

“My Precious Wife, I am in shambles. I am crumbling. I am—was it something I did bid the tide to climb so high that it ripped our shore up?
I can fix it, I swear, if you trust me, I am old and I am rusting but I care, I care.
My Precious Wife, we made a promise, pledged our flesh to be one. How can you doubt a love that stood so proud as we raised our children?
I believe in it still. It has faltered, and it is faded, but I know it’s there.
How’d it change? The way you thought of me? How strange to think we once were lovers.
Now we’ve wrapped the past up in broken glass and when you speak my name you shudder.
Oh, Precious Wife, believe I’ll save this, I’ll revive it, I will—we’ve built a family from this marriage, why would you tear it apart?”
“Oh, speak now, Precious, your silence screams you’re giving in to failure.
Hear me, the promise that you made was meant to live forever,
Until our deathbed, you’re not allowed to change your mind.