Until We Are No More

Pegman took us to Sambor Prei Kuk Temple, Cambodia today. What an amazing place. I wandered around the grounds until I found this amazing picture. My 119-word story follows.

 

Oh, we are a pair are we not?
Wound around one another’s lives
One of us limber and forgiving
The other solid and stern

We laugh over the details
of our failures
We cry over the unforgivable losses
Children
Parents
Homes
Jobs
Joy
Not because either of us is to blame
but because there is no one to blame

We cling and claw our way
through days
And languish in our nights
Making love
or fighting
It doesn’t matter which

Because each brilliant dawn
we awaken with the hope
that one of us will
Let go
Cling tighter
Love harder
Turn away

Or we will both
remain the same
and get on with it
Until we are no more

What Mother Wrought

Lovers come to the bench.
The teenagers spy.
Ephemeral. Unmoving. Only their heads peek ’round the hedge.
None speak. They simply watch.
Tommy ponders the smoothness of women’s skin.
Annabelle enjoys the muscles rippled across men’s backs.
Susanne resents everything about the couples. Would stop them if she could.
For the siblings will never feel such things, make such sounds
or hear the words, “I love you.”
Suffocation should have put an end to anticipation and hope.
But, they feel the need to return. Night after night.
Year after year.
Century upon century.

Today’s Photo Prompt was provided by Liz Young