Remember the curtains Mother? How they wrapped their arms around the sofa on windy days,
how the blue-tongued ocean below our window licked the painted toes of French tourists in bikinis?
Remember tea parties on the balcony, the red dress you sewed for me right out of the latest issue of Burda magazine?
And then the missile’s cry, how its whiny trajectory fooled us
as it lit up the summer sky during rooftop dinners. They weren’t for us, were they?
But that day we hid behind the sofa, you and I, they were for us that day, the day we ran down the stairs
to the damp and dim below, down where death could not reach
and the breath of life was quick at our feet. I remember more, but let’s talk instead about
the dancing curtains, the wide mouthed sea, porcelain tea cups and Father coming home.