Stapelia Gigantea's Hole

 Some things are just
Sad...
Some experiences are embarked upon
Experimentally
With a scientifically cold demeanor...
Just to see what will happen...
Just to see how it makes
The limbic system feel...
Pushing inside
Just to see what I lost...
Just to see if anything of mine
Were ever there...
Again,
Some experiments
Are objectively sad...
Spending an afternoon
With a former lover,
Someone estranged,
And realizing
It was never real,
They
Were never real...
The memory of a shared experience
Now become
An empty shell
Simply taking up space
In the material world...
Physically inside of her,
But she's not there...
She was never there...
No hope,
No joy,
No self-respect...
A Venus fly trap
For damaged insects,
Mostly...
Or a carrion plant
Mimicking the smell of rotting flesh
To attract same...
Lying, immobile,
On her back
Just like when we were a couple,
When I didn't mind
Her lack of participation
In the act
Because I was "in love"...
The corpse bride...
Questioning
How involvement first began...
How this entanglement began...
Grey shades
And monotone "jokes"...
A not-so-subtle
Mean spiritedness 
Hovering close to the floorboards...
A sterile coolness
Oozing from every pore...
This isn't about reconnection
For her,
It's about boredom,
And some futile attempt 
At physical validation...
This is all she has to offer...
All she ever had to offer...
All that she knows
That she can offer...
Questioning how love
Could possibly be felt
As deeply as it had once been felt
For this lost soul...
Sometimes
Allowing someone
To be themselves,
Once things are "over,"
Can be elucidating...
Words not colored
By desperate attempts
To prove a fiction true
Give perspective...
Physicality
Not colored
By tender emotions
Or fictions of loyalty...
A touch more brutal honesty...
Hindsight...
Of course,
Gaining perspective
Can be saddening...
Remembering
All the time you wasted
Polishing that ring
That never did shine
Anywhere
But in the confines of your mind...
Hard to stay hard
When things were and are
Based on lies and self-delusion...
When the object
Contains nothing
But an absence of human emotion
And seems to be ready
For the formaldehyde flush
Before being prepped
For the wake...
Seeing through illusions
Is bracing...
Accepting extant reality
Isn't always palatable...
A bitter aftertaste
Pinching the nerves
In the jaw...
A desolation steadily
Creeping into the bones
Like fall turning into winter...