(from 2 Corinthians 3:2-3)

another teenage girl's parents are getting divorced (she told her church youth small group last night) because they've "fallen out of love" and "fight" and other nonsense that sprouts from lips as weeds in an untreated backyard, and spreads like dandelion seeds blown by the unsuspecting wind.

so we are letters written in exile

how does the world look now through these new glasses: which are out of focus and the wrong prescription and too large for her face, constantly sliding down to the tip of her nose? do the dreams vacate the subconscious, as she lay on this pain, stretched below her as a sheeted mattress when she closes her eyes and heart to the invading moon and star light? (they say kids are resilient--they always bounce back, right?)

so we are letters written in exile 

will this ever leave her real home, or stay, uninvited, like the house guest without the good manners to leave at an appropriate if not scheduled time? will it be there on that July day when rings are exchanged and a diamond glints in the sunlight? or that February day when the fruit of the marriage bed exits the birth canal to unbearable noise and unreasonable light?

so we are letters written in exile

will it ride on her--piggyback through the office: the budget meetings, the overtime, the promotions, the employment politics? will it be among the green of her waist watching salad, the white of her self-medicating wine? will it poke its nose in their bedroom--their gymnasium where they box 12 rounds and then leave, sweaty, for the attorney and their legally, detailed, stipulated life? (free again like they wanted)

so we are letters written in exile

it will be there when she's laying motionless in the beige visitation room, as a man in a black suit starts the engine on a black hearse to warm it for the journey to the plot she was compelled, against her wishes but with good common sense, to purchase as a necessary evil to life (or rather death) on this exiled world.

so we, each, we, are to be well-read letters written in exile  




(* inspired by a line from the poem "Friday Night in the Royal Station Hotel" by English poet Philip Larkin)