Unwedding.

It could never have been any other way.

The multiplication of time and distance, eroding everything that we held dear, and bringing about our inevitable end.

There was no doubt we'd not be sustained indefinitely - the only thing worthy of discussion was the precise moment when the structure would break.

As it happened, it took until March of this year, but the news by then was old - a 'Pope's dead?' weak joke, months after the passing of another Pontiff. Like starlight, the information took its time arriving.

I long pictured the day when I'd need too much alcohol and too much significant music to restore the balance which had been taken away; appealing to cheap wine and to Crowded House to permit an infinitely-thin, infinitely-convincing covering of business as usual.

It could never have been any other way, watching on with increasing desperation as time ran out on us, as the magnetism we'd made our own became repulsion. I became increasingly blurred, melting into the background of your existence, until you couldn't see me at all - an optical illusion in which my own image drained away into the ill-starred background. With a re-focusing of the eye, and the untorsioning of the mind, everything disappears - a miracle!

It could never have been any other way, and I sit in an empty flat with an empty bed, the silhouette of never-to-be-future wife appearing in dreams, catching me by surprise: oh - you're back! Now, months after the event, the whole situation, the violent collision of need which made us both shudder, and the silent assassination of one by another, seems no more than a dream. It could never have been any other way.