So they arrive, the relatives again
in their tight shoes, the men with ties
as narrow as your finger,
shirts with shadows underneath the arms.
The women fill the doorframes with their hips.
They smell of fish, hot oil, and coffee.
One of them has wrung a chicken’s neck
the night before and enters proudly
with her sloppy bag of broken wings
and breasts like hands folded in prayer.
The older women huddle in the den,
as round as ottomans,
these stumps of motherhood
without a pride of children at their feet.
They know the truth
about your uncle, who has not come in.
They know he lived as well as anyone
in that position could have lived,
given his lameness, deafness of an ear,
that turn of mind.
They just keep coming, even second cousins
twice removed. They’re in your house
all day and night, spaghetti junction
of the roads you’ve travelled, more or less.
Their visit lasts, of course, forever.