ALChemy30 Mar 2006
She wears the scratchy skirt she seldom wears--
the one for funerals
and interviews
and other stiff affairs,
and even high-heeled shoes,
the pinching kind that make her limp for days,
and watches other ends
unwind from spools of common thread,
and tales unfold like maps laid flat,
each well-marked route
now stained and old,
showing where these other sojourners had been,
scored with fold-lines
and faults of long use,
worn and thin.
And if she imagines
that in resolution
thereâs some ragged judgment,
well, who can blame her? She welcomes this end,
needs the final hangnail tear of separation,
thinly weeping but clean and clearly healing,
frustration almost bloodless, already purged
and shouted out, unlike these many others here,
who spurt their hurt in gouts
or drip steadily from injuries inflicted,
partings like a briar tangle
of lives entwined, where hope ends trapped and mangled.
But not for her, not for them,
whatever âthemâ remains, most of it long spent,
no longer subject to the pain and strains
of extrication, and even anger mostly gone or mostly going. Theyâve both moved on, as much as one moves on,
with, maybe, a small, dull throb still left to probe,
some phantom limb all that's left between them,
a specter hand of what once was
and now is out of promise.