Dimming of the Lights


The light is going out around me
as shadows gather in faces and hands
reach from the darkness to put a pillow
behind my head, straighten my collar
and button my shirt in even rows
climbing up my neck like beetles at rest.
I feel l they will scatter at my slightest movement.
The shirt will fall away, leaving me 
the tattered bra I wore the first year 
of our marriage.  Yes, I can see that bra
in its filmy packaging, I can see
his face smiling above me as his
fingers fumbled with the straps.
They tell me I don’t remember.
Who is this old man holding a cup
with a straw to my lips,
his eyes moist as he lifts a handkerchief
and wipes at the edges of my mouth.
He looks nothing like the dark man,
tall and handsome and always in a fedora
to cover hair thinning even in youth.  
He looks nothing like the man I married.  
The children are crying again,
crying in their rooms.  Afraid of the dark. 
Why won’t they let me go to them, 
to sing and tickle their ribs until their giggles
chase away the monsters hiding in closets
and ghosts hovering over their beds.

They speak loudly, unnaturally
as if I am too stupid to understand
the construction of words--
they repeat their names over and over.
Can I help it if the ones I loved--
the real ones are still living 
in our first house, just a few blocks 
from the home I grew up in?
Can I help it if everything has changed
and time curls into itself like
an embryo returning to the womb?
Please, stop repeating your names.
I know what you have done.
You have boarded up the house. 
I know you have sold it,
put fifty years of a life—my life
on an auction block.
You call yourselves husband, son, daughter
and sister.  You say I am loved.
I was loved—once.  You just don’t remember.