Divorce

I suffer Father’s infirmities, gas, bad back,
hypochondriac dreams in the den of night. 
I bear Mother’s flaws, pert indifference to 
the written-off, fascination with what’s not.

Father, haruspex, read doom in his dinnerplate. 
Mother herself disdained the fate of gremlin lares. 
The old worrywart, she thought, hadn’t the least
notion of how much fear he could fabricate. 

Full of spent precocity, Mother never 
knew just how much Father could surmise. 
I make do with both their selves sprung off within.
My own divorce must someday come.