<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=397186" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Lydia</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">There was life before us</div><div style="margin:10px 0">my sister and I discovered<br>looking at photographs</div><div style="margin:10px 0">we shouldn't have been looking at<br>of the English girl my father</div><div style="margin:10px 0">was engaged to during the war.<br>Here she is right in front of our eyes,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">the woman before my mother,<br>in a black lace cocktail dress,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">a cigarette in a holder,<br>pensive, earthy—waiting</div><div style="margin:10px 0">in front of the carved wooden radio,<br>for news from the front.<br>This is the war, after all,<br>and here she is again, somewhere</div><div style="margin:10px 0">on an English beach, draped<br>across my father's shoulder</div><div style="margin:10px 0">all of her silky skin radiant<br>above the soft folds of sun dress.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They stand in front of a sign<br>that reads 'Seaside Cottages,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">two dollars.' And here she is<br>again, painted onto the cockpit</div><div style="margin:10px 0">of my father's plane with hardly<br>anything on at all, and here he is</div><div style="margin:10px 0">in his flight jacket, looking<br>in fact, happy. My sister and I each</div><div style="margin:10px 0">lift our pencils like cigarettes,<br>taking long sultry drags to puff<br>out invisible rings. They rise<br>in the air like silver nooses</div><div style="margin:10px 0">that will catch our father<br>and hold him to us.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Geraldine+Connolly">Geraldine Connolly</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=397186" data-title="Lydia de Geraldine Connolly" data-description="There was life before us my sister and I discovered looking at photographs we shouldn't have been looking at of the English girl my father was engaged to during the war. Here she is right in front of our eyes, the woman before my mother, in a ..."></div> </div> </div>

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