Day Eighty-one

Today's words:

Blanket

Decay

Meadow

Picnic

Barrier

China

I shivered on the blanket

Feeling a sense of decay.

All I'd wanted was to go out to the meadow

For a simple picnic

But your coldness threw up a barrier

Between us as real as the Great Wall of China.

I'd set out my mother's china

On the blanket

Hoping to create a porcelain barrier

Against the inevitable decay

To which all life is subject, so we could enjoy a picnic

In this sunny meadow.

At first it was lovely in the meadow,

Eating off of china

Plates and enjoying our picnic

With everything spread out on the blanket.

But then your thoughts turned to the decay

Of our relationship, erecting an invisible barrier

Between us, a barrier

No-one else in the meadow

Could see. But there was no escaping that decay,

Not even if I dug all the way to China.

Might as well lie back on the blanket

And pretend to be enjoying the picnic.

The picnic

Was my idea; I'd hoped it would break down the barrier

Between us. But now, lying miserably on the blanket

In this sunny meadow, 

I saw it had been a mistake. You might as well have been in China,

You were so far away, and I could almost smell the decay

Around us, a decay

Not even a springtime picnic

And my mother's china

Could hold back. No barrier

Could separate it from us, here in the meadow

On a blanket.

Decay erects a barrier

Between the living and the dead. Life's no picnic in a meadow

But it's better than the alternative, even with china and a blanket.