By Candlelight

It' s over, It's not you it's me
The platitude was as plain as the Camenbert starter.
Like euthanasia, the words intended to ease suffering, but, like snow on a summer's day they didn't stick.
Our relationship had soured beyond repair in her eyes, a rift had arisen no raft could cross.
This was headline news to my now alert brain, I had believed we had reached that impossible nirvana, that ecstasy of love and understanding.
So, those words delivered across romantic candlelight caught me off guard.
I questioned her rationale, hoping the past bliss and dripping wax were enough to keep us together.
She pushed her chair away from the table, the metaphoric gap she spoke of now tangible as her features which first enraptured me faded in the dark.
That face now lost to my sight, slowly drifting to a place in my head where mention of her name can't recall.
My unbelieving resistance to her stubborn rigid decision proving futile to say the least.
She left as the main course cooled, my appetite for life, love and steak falling like a burnt out star.
I sat alone at a table for two avoiding the car crash stares of restaurant patrons gorged on pate and performance breakups.
I paid the check with cash and a tip of humiliation, receiving a receipt of compassion not worth the paper it wasn't printed on.
My every memory of you is stained a devastating blue, the days in, the night out, all now besmirched by your words and the sound of the door closing as you left.
I can't apologise for the things I don't know I did, if our time together meant nothing, if my words were but white noise.
I no longer feel anything of you inside me, I blew out the candle that led the way to picnics and sleeping close, and inside the cavern of this hopelessness I no longer care where you have gone.
Without bullet or blade you have killed me with the single thought running around my head.
That while I cry in the dark, your candle is lighting the way for someone else.