Thursday, August 15, 2024

A new ice ageMay 2012

 

May 2012

 It isn’t that I waited

 for this moment to come, 

I dreaded it, 

wondering what it would feel like 

meeting her again 

after the scream and the panic 

and the photo she sent

 from the roof of the place

 where she lives, 

this being the Tuesday 

after the Tuesday

 after the Tuesday 

I left her at the bar, 

her absence in the middle Tuesday

 leaving me here as if in the midst of a wake,

 and she struts in as if unaffected, 

except from the stairs 

where she stops to stare down at me,

 her dark gaze penetrating any defense

I might have maintained,

 and what was once a mere chill, 

is frigid, a new ice age, 

no small amount of heat 

will ever thaw, 

that stare so brief 

and yet so revealing 

as she marches on 

to her place upstairs, 

while I cringe 

in the cupboard beneath the stairs,

 abandoned.



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