Married Life

Married Life: 

Who was my mother before
she met my father and learned to scream?

Did she wear her hair long and loose, 
the thick sheets of burnt oak wheat curled 
habitually between her young piano fingers? 
Did she stop singing  when people 
came in the room? Did cigars find their home 
between her smiles, were curses running  
like bitter saliva through her teeth?

Most importantly: Did she come home one day
--to Pa folded in his armchair, hands tucked tight 
against his sides, whiskey to his right, Ma fixing  
dinner with an eye on her dead son's picture, 
Would she know that every night would be shorter than the next 
until she was the ghost walking the bright foreign halls 
of married life.