In commemoration of sweet love that never dies and that lives on forever.

SWEET NOTHINGS

By John Herlihy


- 1 -
I say hello;
She says good-bye.
I tell her yes;
She tells me no.

I take a train;
She wants to fly.
I favor a movie;
She prefers a show.

I treasure the color of my smart phone;
Her tablet pings a funny tone.
I never snack between meals;
She eats dark chocolate and orange peels.

I wake up at dawn;
She sleeps through noon.
I eat with a fork;
She eats with a spoon.

I feed the frantic pigeons;
She walks the restless dog.
I bake fresh bread
She cooks steaming lamb stew.

I eat the same snack for dinner
For the last fifty years.
She complains I am rigid,
With a torrent of iffy tears.

- 2 -
These are the sweet nothings
That keep us apart.
We often sit and wonder
How to make a new start.

For all our profound differences
That sometime get in the way;
Every morning is a beginning,
The start of a new day.

Life sometimes fools us
And makes us want to cry.
We never agreed on anything,
But ever managed to understand why.

Until one day the unthinkable happened
And our world came to an end.
For us the earth stopped turning
And went no further around the bend.

I go on living;
She happened to die,
Still whispering her preferences
From the great, glorious sky.

I whisper sweet nothings
Year after year
Into the deep dark secret
Of her delicate, eager ear.