Obvious by Jonathan Butcher

On that beach after last orders, the damp sand remaining

stable under our intoxicated feet. That smile of yours as

brittle as the shattered shells beneath our heels, the broken

homes of now long excluded occupants. 

It had taken an age it seemed to reach this pinnacle, like a

weeping wound that was never stitched and left to turn septic.

I now bask the clichéd result that was promised for so many

decades and was now slowly delivered.

To seek an end seemed superfluous, to take advantage of

those Friday night vows which were welded together like

rusted chains, and to pass them through the loop of a paper

ring that tears at the first spot of rain.

We stagger up the concrete steps in cold, bare feet; your laugh

now as dark as the boarded-up shop fronts on the horizon. Any

light now completely absorbed, and as you move forward for

that last kiss, I stub my toe for the second time.  

Jonathan Butcher is a poet based in Sheffield, England. He has had work
appear in various print and online publications including: Plastic Futures, Sick-Lit,
The Transnational, The Morning Star, Mad Swirl, Picaroon Poetry, Amaryllis
and others. His second chapbook 'Broken Slates' has been published by 
Flutter Press.