The All Too Familiar Hallways Poem by Robert Rorabeck

What does it mean to be falling apart—head-room
Like a skull and antlers waiting there beside the highway
That itself had already passed—
Mantle-piece to the moonlight,
Zoetrope without any fingers to lay across;
And you are in another man’s bedroom far afield
From the here and now.
What little things you say to his ear canal
Wound me without even being heard—
What things you continue to give to him you never
Thought to steal from me—
And the schools will reopen in the fall,
And thoughts of you will come around like ghosts
Of little children lost in the all too familiar hallways.