You Promised You’d Stay Here With Me

You always wear neutral colors
You are a forest of gray and brown
And your bed is always empty
Elizabeth was right
You keep your guard up higher than a castle wall
And your hands are always buried in your pockets

I know what happened
On the grounds of the school where you met
When you were carrying three months of salary spent
And I know how she found out
And how her father would never allow
Such a poor family name to lay claim his only daughter

So I know she never showed
And how you stayed for hours
Like a mariner trapped at sea
When dawn reclaimed the sky
You dragged your body home
Collapsing, at last, alone in your bed

You woke after little sleep
Shook the weight off your shoulders
And drove yourself down to the harbor
You walked onto the pier
Where the wind howled and shared your grief
Like it was part of your body
And you slowly removed the diamond ring from inside your pocket
And you buried it at sea