Red Wolf Journal (Online) March 2021
Last night, sleeping, alone, I saw her once again,
three times, as I’d often seen her in dreams before:
once at recycling, recycling bottles and promises,
tossing the clatterous mass into the waiting container,
and twice at the Price Chopper: once in the lot,
parking in her favorite space, her face a smile
like the store was hers alone, owning everything
in it and around it, and loving everything about it;
and again in aisle five, buying toothpaste and
mascara, aspirin and a brush, a bunch of stuff
(she would have said) she’d never need in heaven.
And even now, today, a Tuesday or a Thursday
(I can’t remember which, have lost the knack
for keeping track) I met up with her again
at the coffeeshop in the bookstore, saw her
sitting across from me at our favorite table,
my disbelief suspended by desire for just another word,
for one more moment, hoping she could see me too.