Amir and Sybil
a found poem for Dorothy
sit down. I’ve been sifting through your past lives.
date nights, karaoke competitions, Seinfeld marathons.
the mahogany rows turned to watch your white dress meet
your tan suit. then the smell of dirt and Play-Doh. sand between
our small toes. three collections of first steps, school days,
and sex talks for fifteen naive years. I now see the signs,
the sigils. the eyes, which once whispered pretty secrets,
gone blank before the list of things you both dare not mention,
until every room reeks with the tension of a house whose bones
shake with your silence. the angst that kept me in bed
for three days straight. I bare the weight of seeing things
exactly as they are, like an awful haircut, a racist joke,
or the lady who spit on us in the Ross parking lot
when I was eleven— our contrasting colors not matching
her vision of family. I hear the disguised insults shattering glass
at our dinner table. the sobbing at 12 AM. the footsteps returning
to your bedroom at sunrise when you think I’m asleep. I know
how dark hands once gripped the steering wheel white.
the red wine. the empty pill bottle. the piece of paper binding you
to a house whose dumbwaiter never made it past the first floor.
a house that forgot how much she loves you, the way he still looks at you.
maybe you’re both caught in the monotonous cycle of mid-life,
one sock stuck sipping expensive bourbon with pretentious friends—
without the woman you fought to swoon with two-buck chuck—,
the other lost in the arms of a trainer who stretches your insecurity,
making disgust a reflex for the man you promised the world.
you never hold the door. you never share the umbrella.
you never take her out, or ask how he is. you never touch anymore.
you never notice. part of me still believes that sometimes people grow
in opposite directions. sometimes the people who locked eyes
across a snowy shoreline can occupy the empty house on the hill
20 years later. sometimes stolen glances become bloodshot.
perhaps mahogany isn’t meant for everyone.
A version is published in 3Elements Review Issue 23 (2019)