Wetzsteon, a poet who left
The week I said good-bye
To Manhattan, committing suicide just as I
Drove off,
Born the same year as me
Wrote poems
About me running through the rain, the streets,
Without a slicker, thunder too loud
To say things I needed to say
My silence, she shouts
Her anger,
Echoing outside the buildings,
Plastic bags drifting, descending
Between towers in midtown
While I work
My broken veins inside her heart,
A map of the West Side Highway
Before the 125th Street turn off,
She bleeds, eats a cream puff anyway,
Watching TV
From the same neighborhood cookie shop
I chose the chocolate glaze
She watches the shadows play
On the walls inside my apartment,
The plane descends, rerouted
Above us both, blinking in the fog,
The old wind blows
As I write in Sakura Park
She scratched lines on the benches with her fingernail
I dug at the dirt with my boot,
Picking up my pen once more in a new place
I remember those gray clouds, the brick wall
And the green string wrapped around the blonde child’s finger
You wrote about that little girl
Before you buried your ink
Copyright © 2018 by Susan Melinda Dunlap.
