Happenstance
Your mom stopped by this morning
and on the kitchen table, she left a note,
in messy pen half split between her native language
and cursive English,
meant for your eyes but fallen on mine.
I gathered few words from it but an air of concern.
Your mother never got what she wanted from life,
and neither have you;
neither has my mother
and neither have I.
When I was younger,
my mom would say the right person would make
domestic life bright, just in their presence.
And while I’m sure that’s true for some life, somewhere,
you and I never had the kind of love
that made us love early morning coffee together.
We simply exist to fill the gaps,
making small talk through the afternoon,
referencing a few old jokes,
and memorizing each other’s favorite movies;
we’ll have missionary sex on weekday nights,
share wine with dinner,
and serve as a second name listed on each other’s mail.
Your mom wrote on yellowing paper,
fragile with age,
and I tuck it halfway under a stray cookbook
taken from the kitchen counter.
You’ll be home from work sometime in the coming hours,
and I think I can stay here for a while longer.
and on the kitchen table, she left a note,
in messy pen half split between her native language
and cursive English,
meant for your eyes but fallen on mine.
I gathered few words from it but an air of concern.
Your mother never got what she wanted from life,
and neither have you;
neither has my mother
and neither have I.
When I was younger,
my mom would say the right person would make
domestic life bright, just in their presence.
And while I’m sure that’s true for some life, somewhere,
you and I never had the kind of love
that made us love early morning coffee together.
We simply exist to fill the gaps,
making small talk through the afternoon,
referencing a few old jokes,
and memorizing each other’s favorite movies;
we’ll have missionary sex on weekday nights,
share wine with dinner,
and serve as a second name listed on each other’s mail.
Your mom wrote on yellowing paper,
fragile with age,
and I tuck it halfway under a stray cookbook
taken from the kitchen counter.
You’ll be home from work sometime in the coming hours,
and I think I can stay here for a while longer.
E.J. Carnegie is a Pennsylvanian poet and author based in Pittsburgh with a long-standing love of roadtrips, small towns, and turning everything into a poem. Find more of them in Ice Lolly Review, Sledgehammer Lit, Celestite Poetry, or on Twitter, @ejcarnegie13.