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Black Cord

 Read this poem by Jane Hirshfield and thought of my friend A:

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

The matter of having loved each other is a hard one to resolve once that love has ceased to be as it is in the case of A. It is unclear at what point in their long marriage love departed or if it were that there was never love but they both imagined it must exist because isn't that why people got married and built families? What does remain is "the black cord" that Hirsfield speaks of. It is the thing that "nothing can tear or mend". 
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