Their Stories

There were times like these, always there were,
in which they sat, paired as best they had been able,
and they waited things out, or planned over tepid coffee,
scratching their heads, shutting the noises out.
They were not the ones with money in the bank,
they were not the ones with money at all, a little,
a little left for tomorrow.

They shut out the noises of children in the evening,
of amphibians and insects at night, they shut out
the shouting leaves, the clouds groaning in growth,
the hard scraping of the moon, the terrible explosions
of the stars. They sometimes rocked a little in their
chairs, which weren’t made to be rocked in. They looked
at reflections of faint light in the windowglass.

They thought over things that had been said, things they
had read, things which no one yet has figured out.
Somewhere in the backs of their minds, there were doors.
They kept them padlocked. They wore good shoes when
they had good feet, and they ate good food when they had
good teeth. They made their own stories, and wrote them
in the part of our breath we fear to take.