call and response

my own father
not unlike yours
once pronounced
but not quite unctuously,
a dire verdict on the
same sort of
choice my heart had made
perhaps not too unlike your sister's.

it worried me for years
even as you still stew over
his grime prediction
comparing my choice to his sister's and
of the estrangement
made by the demands of a jealous lover
and isolation
the kept her from her mother and brother.


were my father's perceptions 
of melancholy and desparation
even close to reality
the truth from all aspects of
the reality of my life and my aunt's
fiercely independence
and the men we still love deeply