Separations Scenes
I knew you as a place we visited.
Not home.
Not a voice that put me to sleep.
Just a room behind a stamps store
In a forsaken part of Hoboken.
We arrived;
My mother,
The woman you still called your wife,
My two sisters, and I,
Children decorating a separation scene.
Not daughters.
Not permanent fixtures
Of a transient life.
Just overly dressed children,
Sitting on boxes
Which you referred to as chairs.
And I remember the silence.
Not ticklish pauses between passionate words.
Not preludes to a sudden embrace.
Just long passages
Of suspended noise.
Were you perhaps wondering,
Like I was,
How you managed to replace
The fields of your ancestors,
The Midwestern sky
With this?
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