Upon the Anniversary of Our Divorce

Fifteen years ago, we were like this:

 

We held hands slowly on our way to the sunken movie theater

and I watched you through fractions of light, 

thinking there is nothing more our patch of love could teach us now.

We were inseparable, bound likes veins under the skin.

 

The undoing comes quietly: the handholding ebbs,

we bounce like endless particles without a solution.

And we go round and round, until a child

spins our fragments into a perfect rose-gold circle.

Yet, the deep wounds are waiting to speak misery.

 

Now, we seal our regret into long-knotted memories.

You sit at the kitchen table for two

and I honk the horn from the side of the road,

waiting for our son to appear.

I imagine letting go of the familiar things,

collecting the missing pieces which have been found.

DORSÍA SMITH SILVA is a Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Her poetry has been published in several journals and magazines in the United States and the Caribbean, including New Reader Magazine, Portland Review, Rock & Sling, Heartwood Literary Review, Stoneboat, Misfit Magazine, Nassau Review, Shot Glass, Moko Magazine, and POUI: Cave Hill Journal of Creative Writing. She is also the editor of Latina/Chicana Mothering and the co-editor of six books.