poem || Sheila E. Murphy

E-Mote

You walk the darkness back inside the house;
a cavity called home.
Nervous laughter coheres
feelings as if to form
community.

The half shared portions of experience,
selves within brackets,
confines us to our bones,
too late to cauterize the facts.


Feelings reported above maps
evoke a sharpness within hearing
a request to shift the music
from the chamber.

What relief to find one friend
who signals hesitation for me,
recreating each invented phrase
beneath green overhangs
distracting from the pathways
and the woven roads.