The Thin Places

We don’t touch as we pass each other by.  Even in tight places – a hallway, the laundry room – we are careful to make sure that not a shoulder should rub, or a hip bump up against one another.  It is dangerous, yes, and not easy work.  But it is necessary, and we both realize it is what must be done.  Our lives have come to this, we realize, and we are content, it seems, to live quietly alongside one another.  The kids are too young to realize anything, and it does not seem that divorce is the way to go – too expensive, too much work – so we agree, silently, to go about our daily lives. 

Try to make the best of things. 
As they are.
And how are things really? 
How can things really be when your life takes such a momentous turn,
Such a different look,
After so many years.
Change, this thing that usually I relish and welcome…. I do not know if I recognize change in this form.

I look out the window,
across the street. 
A newlywed couple,
a baby in a stroller,
kicking her feet,
throwing her bottle over
and over
onto the asphalt drive. 
The couple laugh,
continue to pick up the bottle,
arms around one another.

A garage sale next door to where we live,
old junk strewn out,
down the length of the drive,
to the curb where,
had this been a neighborhood like the one in which I had grown up,
stuff would have disappeared.
Every time you turn your back.