WHEN GOOD FRIENDS OF MINE DIVORCE
John Grey
It took a savage storm
for me to understand the concept.
The air before
and the air after
never seem the same.
And I forget the storms
but that divide...
well that’s what I breathe
every day isn’t it.
I’d see one of them
in one place
and the other in another.
I’d talk as if
I was trying to put them back
whereas when they spoke
it was to make even more
distance between them.
In this instance,
I was as much the tumult
as their arguments,
as their lawyers,
as the bloody final settlement.
I think that’s why
I no longer see them,
why they don’t return
my calls.
I’m the flash of lightning,
the rumble of thunder
in the one sky
they’ve already paved over.
So when they breathe
to go forward,
there’s nothing there yet anyhow.
And when they breathe
to look back,
it can only be right through me.
