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?