Other Lives

Things you know without being told
include but are not limited to:

• How to find your way by touch
  to the pantry for cookies
  to give your young visitors
• The jolly fall of sunlight on the garden gate
  by the flowers where you might have played
  if it wasn't just a dream
• The sense of being far from home
  and barefoot in pajamas on a straight road
  by a beach in moonlight
• What the windowless drawing room was like
  where the duchess sat,
  surrounded by her smiling coterie

What you feel is the terror

of intimate understanding, in a pinprick moment,

of a life you never had.

Go to the memories next door with caution,

if at all,

and borrow none. 

August 22 2020