18). Separate

modern poetry

Stay separate from it; it comes back to you;
Lives created around; and wait for the wavelets and the stick house.
We are in it.
How would I have been able to at all?
He was all-encompassing;
He's not in it himself;
We should get the same hours in;
I don't have a lot to add.

Your letter has a typed address;
Typewritten, penned;
So was the letter.
Integrated experience develops a life.
Type of experience;
You write about us.
You write about me.
And you make other hero references.
You can make that choice.
You are, at the time;                              
Part of a different couple, anyway.

A positive departure in the development of other
Continues the expectation of a third-person chronology.
Think about what to think and what to mean;                              
Ultimately, unrelated careers.
Separateness didn't carry both of you
The way you had once envisioned.


"Separate," poem eighteen of "Lettersongs," unpublished work © 2008,
Lisa Page Weil.  All rights reserved.