November Night

It was raining.
Cold, steady rain that makes everything shine
as if it mattered.

The table was empty.
She said what she had been waiting to say.
No shouting at first. Just the decision
spoken out loud.

There was no argument that could move it.
The house had already let go of me.

Outside, the dark was close and ordinary.
No meaning in it.
Only space where I had to go.

I walked without thinking.
Breathing felt like work.
The kind you do because stopping
would be noticed.

In the kitchen light behind me
my son came after me,
words already formed,
borrowed from somewhere else.

He believed them.

They came hard.
Not just anger.
Conviction.
As if he were defending something larger
than either of us.

I remember that more than the blows.

Something in me broke loose then.
Not pride. Not hope.
A kind of distance.

I heard myself laugh.
It surprised me.
There was nothing funny in it.

Only the sound of a structure collapsing
that had been held up too long.

My clothes were thrown out.
They landed in the rain
and took it in without resistance.

I picked them up anyway.

The car was still there.
It would have to be enough.
The seat, the dark, the sound of water
on metal and glass.

No one came out again.

The river nearby was swollen,
moving past without interest.
It carried everything away that could be carried.

The trees bent in the wind.
They did not break.

By morning the rain had stopped.
Light came back the way it always does,
without asking what happened in the night.

I was still there.

That was the only fact.