Over The Last Canal Poem by Robert Rorabeck

All of a sudden the stars were in Mexico,
Like you were in your bedroom:
You had no last thought of me:
You were married:
Two children slept around you like satellites
In a hemisphere where I couldn't breathe—
So I went across the sea to be married—
And you lay on your back
Like a marionette finally put down—
The smile was painted on you—
Sometimes your husband set you on fire
Just to see you dance:
It was why you are still married—
But in the languishing shadows—
I tried to imagine you with my
Eyes closed in the darkness underneath
The airplanes or angels—
Whatever avenue you took diverged
After one year beside me—
And you are in love with that darkness
Which your mother taught to you,
That you have carried by yourself in your
Heart from the first moment you've
Ever collected—
At one moment sweetness, sweat surcease
Of sunshine—your husband's face across
From yours in a Chinese restaurant—
And then the highways of your abandonment
All across you—what is it that you cannot
Remember, but the places we should have
Been together in—
Memories taking solace in nowhere—
Kissing me in
The darkness with the abandoned crocodile-
And you move on,
As the sun slips like a cadaver over the last canal.