Two Poems

The Divorce

From this point onward, everything will go backward.
The rugs will slide out from under their feet.
The lamps will click off, one after the other,
as the doors to each room are opened, then shut.
The last teacups will huddle on the sideboard.

Pried from their fingers, the gold rings
will roll across the polished floors
and lose themselves in little clumps of dust
under the carved oak armoires
emptied of all their belongings.



You

Twenty-five years.
Others have come to take
your place, to wear the clothes
you might have worn, to speak
the words that would have been
...