Thanksgiving, if we had it.
An empty embrace.
A hug between two shells, two empty bags, this arm on my back is but flesh.
“Look at how grown you are,
I cannot believe you are already driving.”
This is how we operate.
Pretending all this time has escaped us, even though its coldness stares us in our averted eyes
Time speaks to us through the whiteness spreading across the sweet face of our childhood retriever
Through the way she trails behind me when I walk her now.
This is how we live with ourselves.
“Do you remember that joke we had, the secret language, how we said we would never forget?” Of course, we don’t.
But it’s easier to gloss over the lost years than to confront their absence from our stories– someone needs to quench the silence at the dining table.
You still disappoint me.
Our hair has grown but we haven’t changed.
Even now, we are still breaking promises to the kids inside of us.
