divorce
tops the list
on the Holmes Stress Scale
death, natural disasters, bankruptcy
paling on the emotional richter scale
compared to the failing of our marriages

pourquoi?
so it didn’t work out
she stopped loving you
he lied, first to you, then to the children
perhaps an affair,
or perhaps
there was no smoking gun

stressful yes, but worse than all
other personal trauma?

Holmes must have
held a singular love
for his wife

when she left
he must have believed
he would never love again

he might even have questioned
that she ever loved him
in sadness,
he may have worried
he would die
without knowing love

so he put it there
at the top of the list

but I’ve always wondered why
he dropped the business
of calculating
the relative properties of pain

I’d like to believe
he was too busy
having met her
and the business
of falling head over her heels
overwhelmed, overcome, by love,
by being loved
that he quit the misery business
his heart not in it

as his heart
had been claimed by another