Photos, Inedible Bones

Carefully, so you don’t break
Any, you lift out the bones
From both ends of a decade

Ended several years ago,
X-rays, in a way, that faint,
That informative, and that

Incomplete, artificial,
The photograph of the scrub
Desert outside the cafe

At one end, the photograph
Of the mother and daughter,
Neither of whom existed

In the life of a decade
Earlier, in said cafe,
Sitting pretty ten years on,

The mother about to leave,
The daughter about to grow
Out of two-parent childhood.

What do they call it? Closure.
A closed frame, from one remote
Spot alone, back to that spot,

The friendship, romance, marriage,
Shared-parenthood years between,
Like that complete skeleton,

Tip to head, of the rainbow
Trout on one of the last plates
Shared as marriage years ended.