What the Hallway Light Was For

We ate in the dark most nights,

the overhead left off to save the bill,

a yellow stripe from the hallway

crossing the table like a threshold no one filled.

My mother passed the bread without looking.

My father's hands were just shapes, just reach.

We talked, sometimes. We didn't, sometimes.

I thought this was how it was for each

family—the saving, the half-dark,

the meal eaten under borrowed light.

I thought the hallway was for spilling into,

that every kitchen worked like ours at night.

Last week I sat at a table blazing

under an overhead, someone else's grace

said over the food, the whole room visible,

and I kept my eyes down like a case

of something. Like a person

caught in a country they don't know they left.

My plate looked wrong, too lit, too clear.

I kept thinking about that yellow cleft

under the door, my father's hands,

the bread going around in the dark.

How certain I'd been that all of it was normal.

How I'd carried it that far.