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Due Date

"After three weeks she had found a wife’s life irksome and, later on, when she was beginning to find it unbearable, she had become a mother."

Kisses conceal the quiet for these young, naive soul-mates,

Two lifeless tongues connect, rotate; perpetuate this mundane date.

Recounting tales of past endeavours, banal remarks on current weather,

Fast approaching the end of his tether, “the service here is taking forever!”

Now perspiration compounds the tension, craving a waiter’s intervention,

The ceaseless strain to retain attention, temporality lingers in brief suspension.

Ambitions conveyed with firm conviction, mask the underlying deception,

Enforced suppression of true intentions, autonomy renounced to social convention.

Kisses conceal the quiet.

Marriage masks the mundanity, the ever-increasing apathy,

A superficial ceremony, an unimpassioned matrimony.

This legal contracts bind these souls in perpetual allegiance,

A union not of love but mere pragmatic convenience.

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.

Turgid tulips, vacant vows, garish gifts and a chocolate fondue.

But beneath the veil tells the real tale - a haggard, ghostly pale,

The slow inhale, exhale curtails a deep, resounding wail.

Marriage masks the mundanity.

Children conserve the conjugality; an ever-diminishing flame,

Thrusting upon a helpless child the illustrious family name.

Nine months of impossible agony incarnates an unrelenting pregnancy,

To finally achieve normality in a customary nuclear family.

Swollen breasts, the bump manifests, oh ever so tenderly caressed,

Thanking God for being blessed with this insufferable little pest.

Fatigue, cramp, pain, nausea - a welcome disturbance from the marital inertia,

Anxiety, tension, stress, insomnia - in frantic pursuit of their platonic utopia.

Children conserve the conjugality.

The duet finally dissolves in divorce, everything must run its course,

Nine months of blood now shed in court, negotiations falling short.

Hostility over custody, discrepancy over alimony,

“How on earth can he plead poverty with millions tied up in his subsidiary company!?”

Wife refuses settlement, husband sued for embezzlement,

Allegations of a violent temperament, appeals to the Old Testament.

A fractured family blasted open: mother, father heartbroken,

Children scarred from alienation, diminishing dreams and mounting medication.

The duet finally dissolves in divorce.

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