Orphans
We’ve left behind orphans, you and I,
a gaggle of memories like street urchins
left to starve and die in the
city of self-imposed amnesia.
We’ve staged our own deaths,
reciting happy obituaries of our former selves,
birth announcements of our new incarnations,
everyone duly notified of fissure and closure.
So that those troublesome orphans,
believing us dead,
homeless, unattended,
are left forever behind;
memories unremembered,
past disowned by present.
But they know where we are,
and they come,
knock on the doors behind which
we’re safely ensconced in new lives.
We let them knock,
cringing and waiting
with furtive glances
from behind closed curtains
until they finally recede into the night.
They are unconcerned, these little orphans.
The camouflage of our reinvented selves
don’t hide us.
They will be back.
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