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Poem - APOLOGY

by Marie Howe

The shadows have come back, circling the room like headlights. It is for this I leave you: sudden October, the leaves burning, bike crash and slamming kitchen door, the boys scrambling into the back woods.
My mother, standing at the stove, has raised her spoon, about to ask a question, like my father, his last week living, who wandered from room to room almost satisfied, but for something one more thing he couldn’t remember.
But all this was years ago. Last night, in a dream, my father refused to play King Lear. He had married someone else. She stood in the wings wrapped in an old tweed coat, looking at her watch. Already, the facts dissemble.
Even now, as you desire me, my mother is stirring the question into the burning soup as my father’s mouth closes,
the one hundred and nine years between them walking away like a man who has knocked on the wrong door.
The boys crossing the street behind him, making small rude noises, are growing out of their sneakers. My brother already wears his nervous look. The leaves are burning. Next year, even this will be outlawed.
Understand, I love you, even as I turn from you like this to run breathless down a dim and disappearing street behind a man who squints at house numbers, bewildered, about to say something I want to hear.

Topic: Pain, Sad

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