Parallel Monologues

Q. How was your Christmas and New Year?
A. Terrible, my worst ever.
(He tells me about his wonderful holiday)

Could it be that this way of conversing
has passed down from grandmother to father
to daughter; a repeating pattern?
This way of not really listening and
not really responding to what has been said;
skirting the actual substance of words
by way of others, more comfortable.
Dialogue impossible as people,
lives inextricably tied by genes,
reinforce a pattern of disconnection
resulting from entrenched conversational habits,
starving out intimacy.


Early 2004