In our subdivision, we’d never break
a fresh loaf of bread together.
At night, we keep the blinds closed
so that our private lights never touch,
denying that the light of day
exposes us both.
We are more strangers than neighbors,
you a property owner in his right mind,
I a deed holder on your left.
Could we ever be brothers
instead of bothers, each worried
about the other’s age, health, hardening
of the arteries and of the heart?
One side of a fence seldom feels the other.
No, we can’t straddle a wall and mend it,
nor can trust return to tear it down.
Perhaps one day our children
could play together.
Robert S. King lives in Athens, GA, where he serves on the board of FutureCycle Press. His poems have appeared in hundreds of magazines, including Atlanta Review, California Quarterly, Chariton Review, Hollins Critic, Kenyon Review, Main Street Rag, Midwest Quarterly, Negative Capability, Southern Poetry Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review. He has published eight poetry collections, most recently Diary of the Last Person on Earth (Sybaritic Press 2014), Developing a Photograph of God (Glass Lyre Press, 2014), and Messages from Multiverses (Duck Lake Books, 2020) His personal website is www.robertsking.info.