The Sitting Room - Anne Clark

You are just atenant here, you say

Living in and out of this life

An cheaply as you can.

I sit here in the darkness

Gently

Like an old woman

Thoughts knot and click like brittle bones

Doing too much

Trying to question all of this

Trying so hard to fade out

In the blackness

All of the fear

All of the tears that bring us to this.

Sometimes it is better that we sit

Here in the silence

I don’t look at you

And you don’t seem to notice

And the reasons —

The reasonsare impossible to see converge.

They gather like dust upon a shelf