Familial - Living and Leaving, What We Call Growth

Bound
by the blood,
and chained
by the veins,
we stayed rooted to
the chairs around the dinner table
watching each other
as the walls broke around us.

Then, each familiar face
transformed in the light
that came thrashing in;
blemishes blossomed on
the skin that had once seemed
unflawed, blossomed
like a mold
eating away at the features.

We loved each other before the world
but will we love each other afterward

once our perceptions of one another
have burned to charred skeletons
of what they had been,
once we no longer care to remember
the suppers of our childhood?