We glided in boxes
Carefully separate
All of our movements
Elaborate jockeying
Choreographed to allow
No touch
Our only signal
The desperate gleam
Of hope for some contact
Through the very words
That kept us apart
And the shy aloofness
Of propriety and habit.
(Habits as old as our parents,
Learned from them, who no doubt
Learned them, not on purpose
From their own)
When all we really wanted
Was the boxes to dissolve
The boxes of manner
The boxes of habit
The boxes of clothes
So we could melt together
And be one.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 17, 2011