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(the children, hardly children anymore)
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Behind the forming
still unfinished faces,
she feels them slip
away from her;
altering the bonds.
A loosening
like letting out the seams
in her flesh.
(and she remembers the episiotomies)
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She wants to yank
the children back
but can't; a tug-of-war.
Or lure them with
the same soft singsong voice
that drew them to her then;
its brief enchantment undone,
spent.
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The eyes that will not
by her coaxing
or insistence bend
to meet her gaze.
Her own face forty now,
already into its unforming.
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(the aging parents and her rage
at their diminishment)
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Behind the demolition
of their faces,
she feels them slip
away from her;
altering the bonds.
A loosening,
undoing,
an unraveling.
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They sit deliberately down,
landing as if dropped upon
their places on the couch.
Her father hardly speaks;
her mother chatters on and on.
There is no room for her
at all.
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She wants to throw herself
smack into them,
force back the space,
a brutal kind of burrowing.
Or shake them by the shoulders
into who they were before;
the solid strength,
the crooning comfort
spent too soon.
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(married almost twenty years)
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Beyond the clutches of my fury
and beyond my reeling-in,
I feel them slip away
in this abandonment,
but then
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there is your hand
upon my arm,
a firmament.
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You who I chose
for no good reason then
(your bearded smile and
the color of your eyes)
beside me still.
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I choose you now again
and feel a clasping,
feel a fastening
of the bond.
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