Mute.
The
divorce gathered itself for one last fling
as
we stood, in the kitchen, apple peeling.
This
division, the slide of knives sloughing off skin
the
work that might keep us together,
was
just a knot that gave pause, the tangling
of
glances looking for the lost.
We
built a white cairn whose every addition
a
prayer to a disinterested god.
That
should have been her remembrance, not when I
signed
dotted lines, held back from crying
dust-dry
sounds like that kitchen’s silent, lying
restraint,
when there should have been words. It was
one
of those times needing no disguise;
guard’s
dropped, like the fruit of our labours, like sighs.
