| Everyone dated the demise of our neighborhood
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| From the suicides of the Lisbon girls
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| People saw their clairvoyance in the wiped out elms
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| And the harsh sunlight
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| Some thought the tortures tearing the Lisbon girls
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| Pointed to a simple refusal to accept the world
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| As it was handed down to them
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| So full of flaws
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| But the only thing we are certain of
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| After all these years
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| Is the insufficiency of explanation
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| (Obviously, doctor, you’ve never been a 13 year old girl)
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| The Lisbon girls were
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| Thirteen, Cecilia
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| Fourteen, Lux
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| Fifteen, Bonnie
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| Sixteen, Mary
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| And seventeen, Therese
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| No one could understand how
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| Mrs. Lisbon and Mr. Lisbon
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| Our math teacher
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| Had produced such beautiful creatures
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| From that time on
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| The Lisbon house began to change
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| Almost everyday
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| And even when she wasn’t keeping an eye on Cecilia
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| Lux would suntan on a towel
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| Wearing a swimsuit that caused the knife sharpener
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| To give her a 15 minute demonstration for free
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| The only reliable boy who got to know Lux
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| Was Trip Fontaine
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| Who only 18 months before the suicides
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| Had emerged from baby fat
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| To the delight of girls and mothers alike
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| But few anticipated it would be so drastic
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| The girls were pulled out of school
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| And Mrs Lisbon shut the house in maximum security isolation
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| The girls' only contact with the outside world
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| Was through the catalogs they ordered
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| That started to fill the Lisbon’s mailbox
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| With pictures of high-end fashions and brochures for exotic vacations
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| Unable to go anywhere
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| The girls traveled in their imaginations
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| To gold tipped Siamese temples, or past an old man with a leaf broom
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| Tiding a moss-carpeted speck of Japan
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| And Cecilia hadn’t died
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| She was a bride in Calcutta
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| Collecting everything we could of theirs
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| We couldn’t get the Lisbon girls out of our minds
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| But they were slipping away
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| The colours of their eyes were fading
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| Along with exact locations of moles and dimples
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| From five they had become four
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| And they were all living in the dead
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| Becoming shadows
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| We would have lost them completely
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| If the girls hadn’t contacted us
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| Lux was the last to go
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| Fleeing from the house we had forgot to stop at the garage
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| After the suicide free-for-all
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| Mr and Mrs. Lisbon gave up any attempt to lead a normal life
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| They had Mr Hedly pack up the house
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| Selling what furniture he could in a garage sale
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| Everyone went just to look
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| Our parents did not buy used furniture
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| And they certainly didn’t buy furniture tainted by death
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| We, of course, took the family photos that were put out with the trash
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| Mr. Lisbon put the house on the market
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| And it was sold to a young couple from Boston
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| It didn’t matter in the end how old they had been
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| Or that they were girls
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| But only that we had loved them
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| And they hadn’t heard us calling. |
| still do not hear us
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| Calling them out of those rooms
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| Where they went to be alone for all time
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| Alone in suicide
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| Which is deeper then death
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| And where we will never find the pieces
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| To put them back together |