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.