“Don’t take this the wrong way”, she said, 
tripping all alarm bells in my head.
That’s no way for a good sentence to start,
doesn’t sound great, my brain tells my heart, 
“It’s me that’s changed, the faults not with you…” 
The worrying sentence expanded and grew,
into a towering beast I had to engage 
because she’d dragged it out of its cage.
One final twist and the can gently turns, 
and the room’s alive with unreturnable worms.
We sit and the sentence has ended so now, 
I rack at my brains and try to think how
I can wrestle control by something I’ll say, 
or discover what I might, take the wrong way.
Her words gently drift all over the ceiling. 
I hazard a guess at how she is feeling,
but we sit in the silence, as speaking has ceased, 
the two of us, worms and the unmentioned beast.
“What do you mean?” I hear myself speak, 
and she forces a smile, patronisingly weak.
Then she talks, and she talks, and rambles a bit, 
something about babies, houses and shit,
and she explains what, I shouldn’t take the wrong way, 
and how, I’m not being offered a say.
“It’s time to settle down and plan way ahead.” 
Did I take the wrong way, what she just said?
Or was that a new plan to end my life here 
with a mortgage, children and boring career?
She goes on unconcerned about how I must feel, 
one sentence, one Sunday, just made this shit real.
So, me and the beast, and the worms on the floor, 
look on, as she plans my life a bit more.
I nodded my polite face as she had her say, 
but inside, I took it the wrong bloody way.