LOST LOVE

Thinking back to my parents' fate, it's hard to see how they once romantically passed through the Eden Gate into the land of milk and money, where they fell hopelessly in love and felt the urge to passionately procreate. Afterward, they wore the mortgage mask, a twenty-five-year servile task eventually paying back the bank manager's seven percent overdraft. They scrimped and scraped in a steel city strife, and then this beleaguered husband and wife decided to search out a big world party and a brand new life. They both sat before a monk-faced magistrate who annulled their vows of matrimony, awarding one spouse the house and the other a monthly allowance of alimony. Friends and family tried to console and commiserate, all in vain and far too late, as both parties now had hearts made of suede and heads full of hate.