There was life before us <br /> <br />my sister and I discovered <br />looking at photographs <br /> <br />we shouldn't have been looking at <br />of the English girl my father <br /> <br />was engaged to during the war. <br />Here she is right in front of our eyes, <br /> <br />the woman before my mother, <br />in a black lace cocktail dress, <br /> <br />a cigarette in a holder, <br />pensive, earthy—waiting <br /> <br />in front of the carved wooden radio, <br />for news from the front. <br />This is the war, after all, <br />and here she is again, somewhere <br /> <br />on an English beach, draped <br />across my father's shoulder <br /> <br />all of her silky skin radiant <br />above the soft folds of sun dress. <br /> <br />They stand in front of a sign <br />that reads 'Seaside Cottages, <br /> <br />two dollars.' And here she is <br />again, painted onto the cockpit <br /> <br />of my father's plane with hardly <br />anything on at all, and here he is <br /> <br />in his flight jacket, looking <br />in fact, happy. My sister and I each <br /> <br />lift our pencils like cigarettes, <br />taking long sultry drags to puff <br />out invisible rings. They rise <br />in the air like silver nooses <br /> <br />that will catch our father <br />and hold him to us.<br /><br />Geraldine Connolly<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lydia-4/
