Coupled Up

That’s what I call it.
having a life partner…
someone with whom to walk
In the world.

It seems to be everywhere I look
except in my house.
I’ve tried a few times –
It never took.

There are other ironies here,
other realities that live along with
my sense of missing out and that
is at times a gratefulness and a
kind of knowing.

For you see I am a therapist
working on occasion with couples
and what I often note
is that some partners should
not be coupled up.

It is a gift you see
and many waste it;
have little or no skill
to enjoy it.

Not knowing how to accept difference
in another, their words are sharp,
degrading, negative and hurtful
reflecting their own self-hatred.

Having forgotten how to laugh
or play, they seem lost
yet you can detect a desperate
desire to mend what is broken.

An irony too is that despite
or perhaps because of my
solitary walk in this world,
I have both the desire
and the skill set to help,
if only they would allow it.

Ego can be a rough mistress though
and the echo of “I’m right”
resonates as loudly in the therapist’s
office as it does in divorce court
where unfortunately it will have the
last word before it dies.