I remember the emptied tables, 

my mother clearing dishes, her wrists

like white china, but soft when she stopped 

at the pluck of violins, cellos,					

my father breaking light with shadow,

stiff buttons loose like his soft breathing—

This is the way light slanted, breathing

itself from wine glasses on tables,

and my mother’s hair like spilled shadow

when it is calm, like her fluid wrists

as they danced with china and cellos.

I had never seen them this way, stopped

between straight chairs: they were the closure

of myself at that moment—breathing

them in as my heart discerned music

from dancing amidst emptied tables.

I longed to break their form with my wrists—

wedge my way between their firm shadow

to say “May I cut in?”—my shadow

thin as paper between them, stopping

them from movement. My mother’s soft wrists

dropping like birds that have ceased breathing,

my father’s hands dropped to a table.

All is silent except for strings

and my mother curved like a cello

or a wine glass over my shadow,

whispering with her warm lips, stopping

my request to stay up near tables

and wine and dancing—to know her wrists

when they entwine like vines that breathe

in the slanting sun. My own breathing

is quiet when I turn from cellos

and sunlight and wine, my mother’s hands				

nudging me from my father’s shadow

and through the dining room, past tables

where she kisses my forehead and stops

near a table, her wrists closed, quiet

as stilled strings when she breathes goodnight

and sends me to the shadows of sleep.