Knowing

Perhaps this is how it will always end -
you walking away like that?
I didn't hear the sounds of failure
even as I slipped, soft as the breath of butterfly wings,
under the covers and reached out for you.

But by then you weren't there, were you?
You had moved on, checked out.
The space between had grown
into a vast empty whiteness.

Your back was turned from me.
I didn't see the tears.
I hadn't judged how final my treachery had been,
nor that you knew.

So when, a day or so later,
I came home and saw you were gone,
The roar of that silence shattered me -
"I'm leaving. I can't trust you any more."

Words you wrote.

I could have written them to myself.