Monobloc

It seemed the plastic chairs

we dragged out for Sunday visitors

were always droopy, dog-eared—

white arms marred with cigarette burns

from the year my uncle stayed too long.

They held our bodies unsteadily,

tilted on concrete

while sadness sloshed

in smudged glass cups and clay faces

hardened in 7 o’clock’s patina.

It was hard to deliver bad news—

sitting in the same chairs my mother’s mother

bargained at a sale:

plastic spines bowing

like she once did, counting out coins,

never knowing how long they would last

or how often they’d be asked to hold us

through another ending.