Solitaire

Their hearts came together
And they called it home
He was her king
And he crowned her his queen
And she’d rule over his heart for evermore...


A distant diamond
Merrily twinkled its promise
Of a resplendent future
To be branded someday into her finger

And room was made
For the numbers they’d create
And they smiled their way from one room to another
And forgot their way
To their home together
More space needed, more rooms needed
Away from each other

Her jacks and her jokers haunted him
And they screamed at her through the dark bloody walls
And he chose the aces of the tinsel strewn places
And lay delirious in empty holes
All the clubs in the world weren’t enough
To go as far as he wished to
And yet stay as close as he ought to


She shovelled at his love lying peacefully in its grave
And invoked the ghosts of all his promises
And they hovered and swooped upon him until he hid
Away from them, away from her,
Away from her spade soaked afresh in her blood
And finally the tomb gave way
Revealing the remains of his love
Eaten by maggots, cold in decay

The roof tore apart, the walls collapsed
The throne beneath her crumbled to the ground
He shut his eyes to the blinding diamond
He escaped the burden of the falling castle
She stayed
And watched broken dreams tumble upon her
She sunk beneath the beautiful debris
She painfully breathed the last of her love
As her heart welcomed the pierce of the shards
And she lay there buried alive
Beneath their fallen house of cards