Two reflections

Family

Can be a nest of vipers

The greatest joy

An empty glass

The pain you feel when it matters most

Strangers

The best of times

The cruelest cut

A Sunday

Morning

Before the squirrels are out

You leave the house you grew up in

The walls and plaster and wood of it

Walking fast into town

Empty ships, last night’s slips

A faint odor of terpentine

The market stalls are bare awaiting their traders

Sun is hardly met in sky

You don’t know why

You escape the warmth to be in the cold

Where things unsaid ring truer

In the little park off by the church

Horse chestnuts have fallen

Ivy grows lush

Statues keep their secrets

And imported flowers are red among the green

Like Spanish dancers

You remember

The hollow feeling

And the times it wasn’t

The whoop and rush of emotion

Now you are older and still you are that child

The theatre stands unmanned

All the actors washing their sins

Up to their elbows in suds

He has taken his bike along fastest route

You met here before

Maybe you were twelve

The doorways are the same

The ship fronts have changed names

But still he smells of Autumn and old books

Still his large hand covers yours

And you are the child again

Running from the pain

Dazzled by the jewels of the city

Looking in windows

Seeing this time

Two reflections

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Nothing of me

She stands in the doorway

The outline of her slim shoulders

The hallway light seems peachy

She is home and without her

Home will be a strange wasteland

Where survivors cling to wreckage

Watching for her shape every night

The smell of her still on tortoiseshell hairbrush

Why didn’t she need it when she left?

How did she choose what to take and what to leave?

The only choice I was certain of

..

I was not under consideration

That need, to not need

Suffocating on duty and then

Deciding to toss it into wastebin

Along with other chains

I have carried as my own brand of perfume

She who gave me life, wanted life without me

Always did, from the first day they placed me in her arms

And she thought … oh no

It isn’t her fault

Love never arrived

But I am left alive

Yerning to matter, knowing I never will

It is a bigger part of me than I care to usually admit

A voice in the dark always crying for Mommy

I thought I’d grow up and get over it

But wherever you go, there you are

In my case, a kid whose mom didn’t want

I’m still looking at doorways

Watching for her tread

In other’s faces, a memory yet

Even as I grow older than she was

When she squeezed her heart

And despite the shared DNA

Found it held

Nothing of me