You will sit at an old table, meant
For more people, bent
In wrought iron the way she'd liked.
Except that she isn't here,
And you overcooked the eggs
And your coffee is warmer than blood and bitterer than bile.
And I will sit across from you,
The fruits whose bitter pips you forgot to spit.
Remember when we used to talk about
The end of morality and why capitalism
Always wins and how wars are quieter now?
This house is quieter, now.
You talk of taxes and subsidies and
Heirless shop closures.
An inheritance of emptinesses
A legacy of voids I have always rushed
To fill, to feel some sense of
Having mattered. We mutter
Of the hurt we are too tired to take.
Maybe I don't live
Vicariously anymore, through your stories
About heroin and the 80s and
Eric Clapton singing for his dead kid.
I drive to work and buy milk
And worry about taxes and
Ask you what to do.
You always know what to do.
And you pick up a paper,
And ask me to sign.
Just in case, you say.
And turn the page.
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