Taking out the boxes to pack and sort
again, I recalled your quiet tears
falling on the kitchen floor, ashtray
on the counter like an urn, my resolve
to leave fueled by smoke and drink,
your marriage bed rife with ghosts
of former wives and me, lost in the haze.

Your twin girls slept upstairs
in their dormer rooms, as young
as I felt, while I sunk listless,
lighting candles to my Irish
mother, no longer here to rescue me
from a marriage-less love.
Confused and lost under a pall,
I crept back onto the blank page,
a beggar without grace.