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Everyone dated the demise of our neighborhood from the suicides of the Lisbon girls
People saw their clairvoyance in the wiped-out elms and the harsh sunlight
Some thought the tortures 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 explanation
Obviously, doctor, you've never been a 13-year-old girl
The Lisbon girls were; 13, Cecilia, 14, Lux
15, Bonnie, 16, Mary, and 17, Therese
No one could understand how Mrs Lisbon and Mr Lisbon, our math teacher
Had produced such beautiful creatures
From that time on, the Lisbon house began to change
Almost every day, and even when she wasn't keeping an eye on Cecilia
Lux would suntan on a 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
Who, 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 in maximum security isolation
The girls' only contact with 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 with a leaf broom tiding a moss-carpeted speck of Japan
And Cecilia 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 the exact locations of moles and dimples
From five, they had become four, and they were all living in the dead, becoming 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 had 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. Hedly pack up the house, selling what furniture he could in 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 they hadn't heard us calling, still do not hear us
Calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time
Alone in suicide, which is deeper then death
And where we will never find the pieces to put them back together
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