Icebreaker

Now the moon has worn thin as the promises
made at family weddings – to stay in touch,
not leave it so long – and the air is as cold
as the silences that spread like continents
between those who promise and those they let down,

​

there is a stillness, a not wanting to say:
the kind that expands into conversation’s
void, vacuuming the air we’d usually
use to inflate the words that say ‘I’m sorry’,
‘I’m wrong’, ‘Why won’t you tell me what’s the matter?’

​

Little can be done with a morning like this.
We make our bed, pour coffee, pack the children
off to school. We look into our phones rather
than ourselves, see the mess others are making
of their lives, and feel not a pixel better.