In a less politically charged world,

Globalization did not gulp my father's apology

For never being there,

and my mother's antique store never sold

Hemlock dining tables or vinyl records of
Laughter and forgetting
and she never contemplated her abonnement issues

Through absurd questions like how many
Apologies does it take to buy someone's sympathy?

My father, by now, feels like he has lost too much time

While making antioxidant tea and killing creased spiders.

and now he is making up for the lost time

By creating new profound truths about himself.

How he prefers everyone around him to be extremely quiet,

How he is a reticent man who always had been too fascinated

With cinders and things that don't last nearly long enough
as much as they should.

​

Similarly, at 55,

My mother realizes how she prefers verbose

Commercial noises over the voice of my father.

My mother now believes all that is left of her

Relationship with my father is the 
Residue of separation anxiety.
My mother lacks restraints but loves Anna Karenina,

My mother strongly identifies with my
Sufferings but can not hold herself while clicking a portrait.

My mother. She is sinking, and she
Does not believe Dostoyevsky anymore when he says:

"Beauty will save the world".

My mother used to like beaded bracelets

but does not anymore, and every time anyone shows her
The slightest bit of compassion

She puts her head in an oven and bursts into sobs
but my parents are frightened, and they are healing wrong.
and by now, they have grown into an inordinately

Long queue of memories that will never get better,
Whims that have been poisoned by concerns and false optimism

Mixed in Chamomile tea that got cold

My parents, with time,

Have become each other's necessities

but are disconcerted by each
Other's voices

That is all they are strung together by the mutual 

The hope of not turning out like each other.