I guess it was an emptiness we shared,
me in the back seat of the family car
a window of my own, triangular,
that framed your westing face. I stared and stared.
My staring was the leash I led you by.
You kept our pace along that length of road–
from your sights, a metallic, glinting seam
lit off the moonbeam threaded through my eye.
All true: the sextant, country way, my moon,
but absence present too, a quiet slip,
like when one hand lifts off the piano keys
the other’s left alone to bring the tune.
Now, a hot cloth bathes my sty, the scene returns.
Across my inner lid’s proscenium
drift wandering stars consoled by your cold fire
that spared me what I wasn’t meant to learn–
clear, invisible as mirroring water,
someday I would be nobody’s daughter.