Family Therapy
Tell me,
Were you ready for this?
Being asked to undress,
The tone polite but stern.
The folding of your clothes …
Was it tea or coffee
That you dunked the biscuit in?
I could, I suppose, agree
That when they asked who did it -
Who started the fight,
Who committed the theft -
That you looked up right,
Or that you looked up left.
Are you looking up now,
As if you’d know somehow?
It’s in a shoebox under the bed - still
She’s young here
a stranger to me
the photo
its moment of
happiness
excludes me
Young and happy
the picture captures
this
imprisons and endlessly
repeats it
still as Zeno’s
Arrow
Yet no one remembers
it
this deictic
moment this little death
It lives only in
the image
and what I now
bring to it
yet still the
wound
the piercing of
the heart
It’s all there is and then it’s gone.
