Homestead Apartments in the kitchen hears knocking
on the door and goes to the door and
at the door there’s Haliclona Urceolus
his old high school buddy, she says
“How’s it going Ted?” and Ted brings her
in for a hug says “Hali, come in, want some
pie?” the best kinda crust w the wispy heat
cigarilling out kinda happy house warm kitchen
kinda pie your Nonna makes for you kinda
pie, but Hali declines politefully but looks around delightedly
at the cascading grapes hanging up in his kitchen
and the expert choices of cutlery and knives
decorating the kitchen of that New York brick townhouse.
Ted and Hali. At the table. Old friends. Trading tall tales
of high school, throwing a mattress into the school’s
pool they needed a crane to lift out cuz
of all the water that got soaked in. And care
and hear of each other’s personal lives,
the how of how Hali came to her profession as a
multicellular parazoan organism
and Ted came to be a suburban apartment complex
against his father’s wishes he become
a five star Miami hotel or better yet
a lawyer. Hali discussing her job as a
multicellular parazoan organism
brings up biology, “The sea could
break me into a thousand marooned bits
and I’d still knit my way into new colonies
from my same species, birds
of a genetic feather flocking together
from a broken old, refusing to lose each other
in the bone-deep ocean cold.
That’s the way things should be.”
“Well,” say Ted, “not sure that’s how life should be,
life breaks apart for a reason. Best
leave lie the broken pieces, like these crumbs
of pie.” Hali hides her eyes at her plate
from him, forking at her the crumbs.
“Ted, we’re very alike, us, like how for me,
mesohyl fills the space ‘tween my cells, it’s just
like brick and mortar fills the space ‘tween your
units. What I’m saying is
let the little apartments filled w divorced
dads all work together, like my cells work
together.” “Hali, maybe that’s how thing’s work
at your hippy-dippy job but my job’s
nothing like yours it’s real life, Hali,
and I know that divorced dads don’t live within
the brick and mortar of me for a sense
of community and togetherness it’s cuz
there’s a Jewel two blocks down
and to stay by their kids, in the same town.”
“That’s a lonely way to think, Ted,”
“It’s just, Hali, things broken can’t be fixed again
Things torn apart can’t come together again
Things lost can’t be found again
Things can only be things once
and once they’re not they can never be again.”
The air is still, the steam hums off
the pie, and the bitter chime
of the clock sounds to signal Haliclona leave.
Pore-Bearer bids Farewell
Annulment House, and townhouse
silent but for the lonely scrape of a single plate,
and the stifled crying of divorcés within Homestead’s
walls, the pine
for the next weekend
before all the divorced dads wipe
away the waterworks, put on a shirt
lock their doors behind them,
and silently walk in fall air to Jewel-Osco.