Lizzie had known it was going to happen one day. But that didn’t make it any easier.

She looked out of the window and peered through the rain splattered glass. It had been such a lovely morning, with sunshine streaming through the windows, falling on the golden daffodils on the windowsill. For a while, she’d thought everything was going to be alright.

She picked up the crumpled letter from the coffee table and read the poem again. She recognised it as a translation of Apollinaire’s “Il pleut”:

It’s raining women’s voices as if they had died

even in memory

And it’s raining you as well marvellous

encounters of my life O little drops

Those rearing clouds begin to neigh a whole

universe of auricular cities

Listen if it rains while regret and disdain weep

to an ancient music

Listen to the bonds fall off which hold you

above and below

She paused at “auricular cities”, cities full of sounds. But then she went over the last lines and the signature glaring at her from a blank space. She dropped the letter again. It was final.

He had left the letter in her pocket, giving her a quick peck on the cheek, leaving her stunned in the glorious morning sunshine, as she placed the daffodils on the windowsill.

She had thought, everything would be alright.

For a moment, her instinct had been side-tracked: a quickly vanishing spell cast on her by the web of light.

She had known it for some time.

Even so, she had buried her sense of foreboding under her to-do lists.

John was not coming back. He had found a new way of telling her, because she never listened.

He had walked out of the door and out of her life with a light step, a delicate smile painted on his lips.

*the translated poem comes from How to Read a Poem, by Edward Hirsch.

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