Suicide Underground

Everyone Dated the Demise of Our Neighborhood From the 
Suicide of the Lisbon Girls.
People Saw Their Clairvoyance in the Wiped-out Elms and 
Harsh Sunlight.
Some Thought the Torture Tearing the Lisbon Girls Pointed 
to a Simple Refusal to Accept the World As It Was Handed 
Down to Them:
So Full of Flaws.
But the Only Thing We Are Certain of After All These Years 
Is the Insufficiency of Explanations.

"obviously Doctor, You've Never Been a Thirteen Year-old 
Girl."

The Lisbon Girls Were 13, Cecile, 14, Lux, 15, Bonnie, 16, 
Mary, and 17, Therese.
No One Could Understand How Mrs. Lisbon and Mr. Lisbon, a 
Math Teacher, Had Produced Such Beautiful Creatures.

From That Time One, the Lisbon House Began to Change.
Almost Every Day, and Even When She Wasn't Keeping An Eye 
On Cecilia,
Lux Would Suntan On Her Towel Wearing a Swimsuit That 
Caused the Knife-sharpener to Give Her a 15-minute 
Demonstration For Free.

The Only Reliable Boy Who Got to Know Lux Was Trip Fontaine
For Only 18 Months Before the Suicides Had Emerged From 
Baby Fat
To the Delight of Girls and Mothers Alike.

But Few Anticipated It Would Be So Drastic.
The Girls Were Pulled Out of School, and Mrs. Lisbon Shut 
the House For Maximum Security Isolation.
The Girls' Only Contact to the Outside World Was Through 
the Catalogs

They Ordered That Started to Fill the Lisbon's Mailbox With
 Pictures of High-end Fashions and Brochures For Exotic 
Vacations.
Unable to Go Anywhere, the Girls Traveled in Their 
Imaginations:
To Gold-tipped Siamese Temples Or Past An Old Man, the Leaf
 Broom Tidying the [maw's] Carpeted [speck] of Japan (???).
And Cecelia Hadn't Died.she Was a Bride in Calcutta.

Collecting Everything We Could of Theirs, We Couldn't Get 
the Lisbon Girls Out of Our Minds, But They Were Slipping 
Away.
The Colors of Their Eyes Were Fading, Along With Exact 
Locations of Moles and Dimples.
From Five, They Had Become Four, and They Were All (The 
Living and the Dead), Become Shadows.
We Would Have Lost Them Completely If the Girls Hadn't 
Contacted Us.

Lux Was the Last to Go.
Fleeing From the House, We Forgot to Stop At the Garage.
After the Suicide Free-for-all, Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon Gave Up
 Any Attempt to Lead a Normal Life.
They Had Mr. Henry Pack Up the House, Selling What 
Furniture He Could At a Garage Sale.
Everyone Went Just to Look.
Our Parents Did Not Buy Used Furniture, and They Certainly 
Didn't Buy Furniture Tainted By Death.
We of Course Took the Family Photos That Were Put Out With 
the Trash.
Mr. Lisbon Put the House On the Market, and It Was Sold to 
a Young Couple From Boston.

It Didn't Matter in the End How Old They Had Been, Or That 
They Were Girls,
But Only That We Had Loved Them, and That They Hadn't Heard
 Us Call; Still Did Not Hear Us,
Calling Out of Those Rooms Where They Went to Be Alone For 
All Time, Alone in Suicide,
Which Is Deeper Than Death, and Where We Will Never Find 
the Pieced to Put Them Back Together.