(escapril, day 23: when the party’s over)

Daddy has his study, Mama has the bathroom.

I have my little bedroom, walls painted pink and white stripes,

Starting to flake around the edges.

I can’t lie-I’ve been picking them at night.

They come together for parties.

All the grownups sit together or apart, but always alone.

Each one treading back down their own roads,

Getting drunk on mama’s old wine while the river sits, untouched.

Nostalgia hangs in heavy clouds.

Point out the patterns, pick apart persons,

Anything that’s not here and now.

They fill up albums and drawers with blurry images of fairytale people.

Maybe they were real once, but the repetition of their stories has made it all fuzzy.

The pages crinkle despite all the sealing-up Mama’s done.

She spends hours cutting and pasting scraps,

Fragments that I can’t put together.

They must mean something to her, I tell myself.

But I think it stopped being a choice a while back.

Now she can’t get out of it.

They’re good at killing time.

Making it a kind of sport.

Who can convolute the story most, who can turn opinion on so-and-so’s daughter, who can remember the most explicit details.

It’s some kind of a battle, but what would you expect?

After all, they’re the kind who like it better dead.