Lyric

The front room started without me

While I sat beside my bag

Your voices moved behind the plaster

With names I did not have

A neighbor sold the corner field

The clinic changed its days

Someone’s daughter had a baby

Someone’s roof still leaked in rain

I knew the way you lowered words

When plates were being dried

I knew the cough before the sentence

The chair pulled back inside

But not the man you spoke of

Not the road they had repaired

Not the cousin getting older

In a year I never shared

I knew the voices

I knew the room

I did not know

What they had lived through

Family Voices Through the Wall

Close enough to almost know

Talking over water bills

And winter plans I was never told

I stayed still on the borrowed bed

Listening like I had no right

To the people who still loved me

Going on outside my life

Someone laughed the way you used to

When I was small enough to run

Then the kettle clicked behind them

And the moment came undone

My name arrived much later

Softened first by hesitation

Not forgotten, not expected

Just placed inside the conversation

I knew the voices

I knew the tone

I did not know

How far they had gone

They spoke about the broken heater

About a form that had to wait

About the shop near the station

Closing early after eight

Nothing in their talk was cruel

Nothing turned away from me

But every ordinary detail

Had learned to happen separately

I could have opened the door

And made the room include me

But some doors are harder

When no one has refused you

So I let the wall stay there

Thin enough to be unkind

Keeping back a family

That was still, somehow, mine

Family Voices Through the Wall

Lower now, then gone by degrees

A spoon set down, a chair pushed in

The sink turned on, the house at ease

I lay there with my coat still folded

At the foot of someone’s bed

Close enough to hear the living

Far enough to miss what they said