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 two sisters, and I,
and the woman you still called your wife –
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 subtle pauses between passionate words,
not preludes to a sudden embrace.
Just the scent of mould,
and the sharp squeal of tracks.
Were you perhaps wondering,
like I was,
how you managed to replace
the fields of your ancestors,
the Midwestern sky,
with this?