Disconnect

// Kay Middleton

You’ve always been guilty of collecting random things,
stacks of half-read magazines, parts for projects still in packages,
two drawers of socks.
Trying to balance the universe as if it were your own.
Three layer coconut cake and cold milk means delightful pleasure to you
reminds me of a funeral.
I’ve told you the story but you always forget.
I remind you and you insist I was just a child,
couldn’t even have known my uncle all that well,
dismiss it as unimportant, a bad memory I should try to disregard.
Too bad, my dear, you missed the poignancy.
If you paused to consider the event you might have wept with me.
That would have strengthened us.
Instead, forks jangle against the plates and milk sours
in the glass.