An Aubade Without Love Poem by Ella Yaron

The impatient fire licks over the horizon
chasing the blanket of darkness
It creeps through the cracks in the shutters

alighting on hollowness

a painting of manufactured love
hung crookedly, concealing a couple,
paired for mere warmth.

Turn back the clock to midnight –
like beasts, they mate,
candlelight the only spark.

And in this vast, empty
silence
the sound of latex splitting.

Sunrise finds
no star-crossed lovers
yet her body has been granted a gift

No pause to question, the powder-white tablet slips
down
down
down


to extinguish the flame that had begun to burn.