She was the girl next door
That longest lonely night in 1973
Who latched onto me at the diner
After those many months of me
Ordering buttered roll for breakfast
Who tipped me with her smile
And suggested we get together
Some night when neither of us
Needed to work, and when we did
I could do no more than sit
In the rooming house
Next to my rooming house
In that all too suburban Montclair ,
Still wounded from a marriage
I could not make work,
Me unable to understand why
The woman she called “mom”
Kept popping her head through
A doorway that had no door
And kept asking if I was done yet
And reminding my waitress friend
That she had the mayor coming
Later and needed to be done with me soon,
And how that waitress and I
Shared that lonely Christmas Eve,
She whispering how much she
Despised this life and how she wished
I could do for her what her mom did,
And now, these three decades later
I still think of her, and the kiss we shared
Under that imaginary mistletoe
We both needed at that moment
To exist.
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