Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past few weeks you’re familiar with Adele’s newest release Hello, a song to an ex-love. It is an amazing song from an amazing singer.
Yesterday, while driving home I heard Gwen Stefani’s Used to Love You. This too is a song to an ex-lover but it takes a significantly different tone than Adele’s song:
Now I realize it’s a bit of an unfair comparison because while I think Gwen Stefani is talented I by no means think she has the same level of talent as Adele, I just don’t. But it is interesting to compare their songs to their exes and see how dramatically different they are. Personally, I think each has its place. I have a poem titled This is a Fuck You that tends to be a crowd favorite. It is, as you’ve likely guessed, a poem where I tell off an ex-lover. But not all my poems to exes are like that, some are closer to Adele’s Hello. Some fall in between. This one is a bit in between.
Broken Quiet
“Did I snore?” you asked.
“My wife said I do.”
I looked at you bewildered,
chased a tomato
around my plate and wondered
why I’d agreed to lunch
with a man who hadn’t shared my bed
in a dog-year.
I shrugged, non-committal.
You continued talking,
asking far too many questions
as I slid quieter into my meal.
If only I’d ordered wine –
that might have made this slip and slide
down better-forgotten lane
a little more palatable.
We said goodbye and I hoped
to never see you again.
A day later I remembered
the sawing of your snore,
the way you held your breath
before expelling the air violently,
the way I lay awake wondering
if you’d breath again.
I remember the broken quiet of the night
you left.
I remember sleeping with the widows
open, the night’s melody
floating in, singing me to sleep.
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