Halfway to Chicago I wear headphones
to cover your voice. You are angry

at the steering wheel. I listen to Oprah explain
childhood pain and remember you once fell

three floors and almost died. You were seven years old?
Or nine. Your father did something to your mother,

your mother didn’t do what she should have done,
and now we do things to each other without

knowing why. Sometimes even when we know
why we don’t know how to stop. Or by the time

we stop we are halfway dropped and ready
to shatter. How we enclose each other and

call the silence love. At The Bean I look for
your reflection. To remember you

looking back at me from many places.
We return to the parked car, sit there—

two exquisite sculptures,
propped by a feeling

that rupture, even though we don’t
know why, is arriving to happen to us.