ISSUE: Summer 2014
That summer night, we gathered again around the table,
drinking with all the bugs that lit up and some that didn’t.
When Mike said: I wonder how my ex-wife is doing,
we looked down at our phones which glowed like
all those fireflies, and we looked up old loves. Except me.
I remembered I crossed a city in winter once,
scaled a steep snowy stair to a man farther from me
than distance. He could not love me. Not then.
The betrayal, he said, is just too much. Then he
closed that door and latched it resolutely. Anyway.
One woman found her ex married again;
he held a child in a picture captioned: This is the best
it’s ever been. She bent her head and wept.
One shouted: Look, look. Look how fat she is,
but even so something crossed his face like weather.
The woman in the picture was smiling as if she
swallowed some joy so great it could split the skin.
Oh look, I said, see how happy they are without us.
The wind was cool and soft, and insects drawn to fire
fell into hot wax never to escape. I thought on that
in long days after. I’ve thought on it a good long time.
