Next Door

What brought him to finally
surrender to the shared
covenant of marriage
presumably to utter the
brief assent of the marriage vow
is the mystery unsolved. What
convinced her to pursue that
darkly morose candidate to
a remote monastic cave is
something else entirely. For
her, a woman of emotive 
warmth and expressive gaiety
those mysterious motherhood
hormones wasted certainly
played their part in the ageing
persona of one spinster-bound.
The boy he sired is as
querulously demanding and
controlling to a fault in his
young adulthood as his
increasingly bitterly-silent father.
The young woman, his sister,
found it expedient to leave home
and the father intolerant of her
absorption in the theatrical arts
her flamboyant mode of dress
her casual comfort with the
society he dreads and deplores.
The pathological social misfit
has honoured that marriage 
covenant as far as he interpreted
it; his wife obedient to his
demands and command alike. 
She is diminished in persona,
given to cringing agreement,
fulsome praise of her glowering
tyrant; crushed spirit subdued.