It’s not in the cliché way
you smile, say Dad and Mom “stayed home”.
It’s the picturesque shot of you
walking into church alone.

It’s not how you left out
the visiting sheriff’s car,
but the phone left on your nightstand that didn’t text a soul.

What do you even do inside
that verbal processing head of yours,
your only confidante in
the maelstrom below?

Will it feel weird?
When this becomes a formative part
of your story you’ve a name for,
that you quickly share along with what’s
your major, what year are you?

“Where are you from?”
“I am from dysfunction!
I talk like it, walk like it, dress the part.

And yet you cannot tell!”
Alienated,

bad at translating human, we are-
Me to you, and her to him,
and their to our dysfunction.

Well, I’m a linguist.
I picked yours up and put it down

in a poem I can’t publicize!

Because you wouldn’t tell a single soul.
You leave church alone.