The following is about the feeling of loss because of mis-set expectations.
We go through the house
room by room
boxing all our belongings.
Outside it is raining,
cars shining and wet.
Somehow, something was lost
and it cannot be found.
Still, we count everything twice,
until it no longer matters,
no longer makes sense to look for it.
What is broken cannot be unbroken.
But the house holds us quiet.
It’s as if someone fell asleep in a doorway,
a sense of something about to happen,
of the waiting of children
in a winter air,
and a warm room, floor furnace on.
It does not serve
that there is no forgiveness
or finding of fault.
Our present lives we never count.
Our pasts we cast off.
Our stories suddenly set sail without us
by moonlight
and we are alone in the dark.
Seas are rising.
We touch one another,
hands, eyes, tongues,
breathing odors of surrender.
We can no longer stand upright.
Empty houses, dogs barking,
the waiting of our children
like pieces of a manuscript
blown across a parking lot.
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