Same old shoes

Her attention to the TV would not 

and could not be diverted by any movement in the room

leading him to ask as he loaded peas onto the knife: 

"if I die first, would you please tuck me into my casket?

He felt a surging rage for life, if he could only get her attention.

He wanted to take her by the hand-

yank her out of her TV induced tedium.

He was so weary.

She was lying. She was dreaming.

Her dreams were of divorce and death.

She once said her childhood was

a quagmire of trauma.

Now her heart was merciless.

She wraps herself in mirage.

Made of clouds, a stream of hope
sense of purpose
reasons to live
refusing to acknowledge life's finality.

So he changes the subject.
for he is her lover,
and swore to indulge her;
a soldier full of strange oaths.
He sighs like an old furnace...

We are all mortal, absorbed in the painful reality
of eternal life, eternal youth;
the elaborate, deliberate system 
of words and customs used to disguise death.

                            We are the loved ones cared for by the bereaved                                       despite all beliefs, all attempts of evasion

death survives.