My parents dining alone when they meant to dine together.

MY PARENTS DINING ALONE WHEN THEY MEANT TO DINE TOGETHER BY FAITH SHEARIN 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 52

My mother and my father agreed to dinner,

set a time, and arrived at the restaurant separately;

they parked on opposite sides of the parking lot,

were seated at opposite ends of the restaurant,

where they each ordered two of everything:

steak, baked potato, salad, bread,

then sat, waiting, while the other patrons

gathered in happy family clusters, describing traffic,

taxes, gastric disturbances. My mother said she

was angry, cutting up her steak, watching

the meal she ordered for my father grow cold,

while my father, in a nearby booth,

was also mad, his napkin in his lap,

his reflection chewing in the window glass,

a waiter reciting the names of pies.

FAITH SHEARIN

I wrote this poem after my mother told me a story in which she and my father missed each other entirely while eating dinner in the same restaurant. Something about the image of the two of them dining simultaneously, but apart, seemed to me both tragic and comic. I loved that they had ordered for each other. I was haunted by the thought of them staring across separate tables at emptiness. My books include The Owl Question (May Swenson Award), Orpheus, Turning (Dogfish Poetry Prize), and Darwin’s Daughter (SFA University Press).