Adrienne Rich — After Twenty Years

(For A.P.C) Two women sit at a table by a window. Light breaks unevenly on both of them. Their talk is a striking of sparks which passers-by in the street observe as a glitter in the glass of that window Two women in the prime of life Their babies are old enough to have babies Loneliness has been part of their story for twenty years, the dark edge of the clever tongue, the obscure underside of the imagination It is snow and thunder in the street While they speak the lightning flashes purple It is strange to be so many women eating and drinking at the same table those who bathed their children in the same basin who kept their secrets from each other walked the floors of their lives in separate rooms and flow into history now as the woman of their time living in the prime of life as in a city where nothing is forbidden and nothing permanent