It was not a tangible moment,
Neither apologised or reconciled, though both remembered.
It was a series of letters.
It was displacement, loneliness, Perestroika. Goneril married
A man who she did not love, isolation ate Regan alive.

Their memories of conspiratorial asides were
Created things. They would write to each other
From far away; bodies pitted to the earth, waiting. They’d sit looking through
Their windows with suspicion, as if somewhere between were an
Impossible storm. Their father’s house they visited seldom,

He visited them each only once. He had no need of letters.
The land of dominion contains within it no silences, or so they say, and even if it did
He had Cordelia, who did not write
And did not remember but spoke to him gently and he was father and mother both.