packing up, heading out
The luggage is in the car, trunk packed
with boxes and bags like building blocks,
as if leaving was just another game,
this turn toward the open road.
If we were in first grade and this was “house,”
I would be departing for work, you
the library. And after the long recess
apart, we’d meet lips chastely, having the promise
of our whole lives together
to get it right. If this were play,
I’d say to you, kiss the kids for me–I’ll be late,
again. I’d disappear around the bookcase,
hide in my pretend office, distract myself
with colorful picture books, dial a toy phone
to my secretary and look out the window at the rain, the birds.
If I hadn’t forgotten, I’d return to you
whom I hardly know, and you’d be there
on the flowered rug in your socks, reconstructing
the wooden pieces we’d built together, adding rooms.
In practice, we never fought–my words never bore knives
or chased you. I never sat at bars unraveling myself
to strangers, to women who defied lovely. You never sulked
in a nightshirt, overspent. You never smacked
a swath of your child’s skin, made it burn.
If we’d have understood the purpose
of a door, the reasons we return to open it,
the step into devotion, my car would not steer away.
You would not stand so tall, my final backward glance.
Tags: Poems, publication