Better that I had been a chimera,
a passing thought, a brush in rush hour
That might have been, but wasn’t an embrace
for the rest of your life.
Instead of nothing, you got something
that wasn’t—
Wasn’t even the promise of a call tomorrow,
afterwards….
You knew better than to wait by the phone,
so, past you went,
Not even a glance over your cold shoulder…
you never looked back or reached out at all.
But, now, that’s all you do
is look back and back and back
To see us not there together….
Wait, I should have stammered:
Don’t just walk past, away from me, from us.
Turn around then or now,
For god sake turn around
and at least smile before you go….
I’d like to remember that smile,
the one you still keep in your purse.
A Hill resident, the author believes that the appreciation of art should not be influenced by the vagaries or prejudices of biography.
