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
Thirteen, Cecilia
Fourteen, Lux
Fifteen, Bonnie
Sixteen, Mary
And seventeen, 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 everyday
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 colours of their eyes were fading
Along with 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