By: Anthony J. Langford

Take a look around
Close quarters
In rounded wholes
This is the life you’ve created
A home
Where you reside
At least physically
With another.

Once joyous
Where empty rooms
Were common
As it was always
Both of you in one
Who would want it any other way?

Warmth discovered with flesh against flesh
And light strokes
To shoot colour
Across the darkest skies.

Until routine replaces novelty
And that once foreign term
Privacy
Becomes highly sought
Yet elusive.

Harsh words are not frequent
Nor tender ones
With memories so serene
That they surely belong to someone else
The way your union belongs
To family and friends
And school and work and banks
Institutions with passwords
And overlong account numbers.
You barely possess ownership
Of yourself
Let alone your history.

So do you have the right
To kill it?
Investment higher than granite towers
Responsibility heavier than ore
Is it murder?
Or is it euthanasia?

Or do you allow yourself to die inside
As you’ve slowly been doing
And call it suicide.

*****

Anthony J. Langford lives in Sydney, writes novels, stories, poetry and creates video poems. He is a 2014 Pushcart Prize Nominee. Recent publications include Five Poetry Magazine, Forge Journal and The Glass Coin. He works in television and has made short films, some screening internationally. A novella, Bottomless River (2012) and a poetry collection, Caged without Walls (2013) are out through Ginninderra Press.

Much of his work at www.anthonyjlangford.com