Confusion

People have changed

They no longer lock themselves in the bathroom after a fight

They don’t drink with horses in some field on a cold night

No more small dinner parties where the man makes a pass at the neighbor’s wife while she helps with the dishes in the kitchen that’s bathed with convenient half-light that hides a face, a hand

Yeah, things have changed

No walking down the dark lonely streets

No blacking out on the beach as the tide rises and the crabs prance like dancers at your daughter’s recital

No calling an old lover at 3:00 in the morning with a husband dead asleep from too much whisky flowing over cigarette-stained teeth

But maybe I’m making rash assumptions about me and you

Okay, yes … the nightmares do remain and the way people die, that … also is still the same

I guess the pain, too, has not much changed, things still hurt, they still creep along the edges of the wall as they make their way to the bedspread dragging the floor with you unable to breathe because you have decided to just stop the involuntary reflexes that push you forward

Life without breathing is difficult and they say, oh, it was time or an accident, everything natural or accidental in this world without end

The end we continue to contemplate and really care about, even though we have not the slightest idea what it means, and on that point, not much has changed, the way we hold hands with God or a loved one or even a poet

Everything receding away … walking the streets, shaking like some kid whose seen a murder, and then into a field, where the horses stand, and going into the kitchen, kissing and drinking, waking on the sand as the tide tries to pull us out

The recriminations and the yelling, no one listening, running into the bathroom and slamming the door behind, turning the lock one last time

No, I was wrong, not much has changed, really, nothing at all