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Some guy, bleeding, just beaten
by hooded strangers on the late train,
asks some girl, Miss S, a witness, the same
question that lovers ask each other
turning from mirrors, away,
“How do I look?” & she, bystanding, replies
“Frankly, you’re in a bad way.”
She’d been thinking of the one,
long gone, who got away, the one
who’d taken himself from her
& those days when she’d turn,
adoring, to him. Amazing.
(That’s what he used to say.)
Thus S, on loss, ruminates.
You can see what she’s getting at,
can see where she’s heading.
Your eyes have got that same telling
ache & sanguine reverie. You too
have once walked in twos, linked
to another in the light rain….
But we all, now & then, walk alone,
especially in the city of men,
where most you meet are bled dry
& broken, or have cashed in
care for possession, where
the injured offer you their arms
so that you might help them better,
like failures, like lovers, where the aimless
fling curses like boomerangs through the air….
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Sarah V. Schweig‘s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in BOMB Magazine, Boston Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Western Humanities Review, and Verse Daily. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia and Columbia University, where her manuscript was recipient of the David Craig Austin Memorial Award. Her chapbook, S, is forthcoming through Dancing Girl Press. She grew up in Virginia and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
