Brotherly Love

In my parents fractured lives
there were two subjects above all others
which were banned from polite conversation.
Saying conversation should be polite was rhetorical
-there was no choice-all conversation had to be polite.
Talk of any other type occasionally crept in
but only when life really hurt. Pain had to be veiled
enough to be shared that the pain was deepened.
The listening was always just enough to make respite
appear possible but actually be impossible.
The two subjects utterly banned were homosexuality
and organised religion-the only sort of religion
they knew about, for being theologically illiterate.
It is odd to me how I have been enriched by my experiences
of both banned subjects, these two have initiated me
in a deep sense of loss, and (rarely) great elation.
Even now both subjects are mirrors of truth to me.
For my parents their biggest taboo was the pain
of disagreeing with each other, which they did rarely
and never civilly, which they deny they ever did at all.
In their avoidance they created their personal catch-22,
in which the more polite they were on the surface
the less they said to each other, and they meant less
by it, until they froze in the atmosphere between them.