"Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two."
-St. Augustine

Fake Lashes

“Fake Lashes” by Roxanne A. Stokes © 2010

She looks into his blank stare
Knowing that she cares more than he does
Realizing it’s been this way
Longer than she’d care to admit
Tears well up in her already bloodshot eyes
Wondering where his passion is
And where it went
She yells out of frustration and betrayal
But also to see if she can get a rise out of him
Something. To make him realize he is about to lose
But instead nothing,
His emotionless face stays the same.
She knows and believes in her heart
That this time she’s walking away for good,
And in preparation for the cries to come
She takes her fake lashes
Off.