Four and a Half Years
“Maybe when something stops, something lost in us can be heard”
-Jack Gilbert
1
Maybe when you and your angers are gone,
I’ll remember how, when I was twelve,
l leaned against the wall in my best dress
and short white gloves as the other girls
were turned and spun, and it came to me
that the world could end before anyone
asked me to dance. And maybe too,
I’ll remember knowing that the couples
waltzing across the windows that faced
the dark, and the reflections of the girl
who watched, were something for each
of us to keep, but why they mattered
I see only now, years after our parents
in their waiting cars, picked us up.
2
Maybe the paintings you demanded back
went home with small changes you won’t
have noticed because you thought them
finished when you laid your brushes down.
But, like children who’ve spent the night
away, maybe your re-hung mountains
and swaying palms are more subtle now,
flecked as they are with dust that isn’t
yours. And maybe one morning as you
inspect the lake outside your window,
a speck of that dust will lodge in your eye
and blur the pictures in their frames so
you don’t quite know them, any more than
you know who you were when you lived
by those hills, those waters, those shores.