By ALYSSA GREGG
After the phone call to my mother
I slumped onto the couch,
letting my fingers grace the
itchy material I never liked.
Was this irony?
After all my worries,
after all my paranoia,
I had persuaded myself
that I only thought nonsense.
I’d been right to worry
and now it was far too late.
I supposed I might as well
go upstairs, change clothes
before my aunt arrived,
to steal me from this place
that I had once loved.
Where my love was stolen
by the arms of many men
and zipped into a black bag.
In the bathroom, I pulled
a new shirt over my old
and faced the mirror.
I wanted to believe that he was
on the other side of the glass
unseen, listening.
I sat on the counter and rambled,
careful not to weep,
I couldn’t let him see me cry.
I told him my dreams
about us, that he never knew:
about how I wanted to live with him
once he found a new apartment
and I’d go to his old school;
about how he’d see my graduation
and we’d go out to eat afterward
and he wouldn’t have a beer
with his meal, just as happy;
about how he’d live through
the surgery he would never have,
victorious as always.
They asked for me downstairs
and I left his ghost in the mirror,
cradling my broken dreams.
