For months my bathrobe hung on your bedroom door.
You came that Sunday to drop it off with sundry
other tokens of our love. Like prisoners of war,
stripped of identity, they were exchanged, while we
stood by. You took my silence for disdain.
But I had been a prisoner of yours so long,
I could only bind my wounds and stare. It was pain
kept the screen door between us, not sense of wrong.
Love cannot be commanded and gifts are vain,
no better than the faith that lies behind. This rift
too is futile, since all will bear your name.
Was such bartering not compromised by grift?
I was abandoned. What else can be believed?
But you, withal, contrived to be aggrieved.