The Demolition of Love

They do not come with wrecking balls. The men who demolish love come with vinyl records from Manchester and hydrangeas in a printed bag. They always bring flowers. They come on their knees filling the grooves in your floor, warming the house *before they know they are leaving it.* They say they are in bloom. Standing in a field of tulips, your daughter running ahead, *they look at you and mean it — every word, every petal.* And then — quietly, methodically — they begin. In disappearances that grow from days into weeks. In Het komt nu niet goed uit — *repeated until it becomes not an explanation but a wall.* In I have done enough — *as if love is labour with a completion point.* The demolition of love does not announce itself. It arrives on April 25th with a pot of oleanders and says: *for the beautiful memories.* It takes a photograph in the sunshine. It makes love one last time. It asks for the loan back. It drives 36 minutes home *to watch a football match.* That is what the demolition of love leaves behind. Not rubble — he was wrong about that. Not ruins. A house. Finished. Every groove filled. Every window painted. A bat house mounted on the garden wall *by the woman who learned to do it herself.* The demolition of love did not demolish her. *That is the part he did not plan for.*