A Family

The parents listen to the children coughing
or fighting. The children listening
to the parents fighting, then coughing.
A lover calling on the family telephone.
Fighting then coughing. Someone driving off
far away for the weekend. Music playing
and growing angrier. The music of our lives
an alternation of touch patterns. Love
somewhere in there, split up the way a prism
splits light. Trying to see all the different colors
in light, the rainbow it casts on a wall,
as somehow us. Light. No self-expression
without violence.