Suzie, I want to tell you
how frequently I pass the apartment
behind the supermarket
where we street-danced
to the Doobie Brothers,
light shifting as the fog
lifted, front-yard roses
iridescent in the salt-gray
seaside morning.
You died, what, ten years ago?
Not at once, really, though pills
took you quickly. It began, I think,
when we were children: without
knowing why, we wanted out
of that rural beauty— the narrow
valley and gleaming stream,
summers spent diving off
crumbling cliffs, as if nearness
to death was the closest
we came to leaving
your stepdad's beery fingers,
my Mother who loved
to touch the sweaty chests
of her daughters’ teenage lovers.
Nowadays, everything
is a different kind of dangerous:
Rain stays away. June mist
sucks away too soon,
sunlight breaks through
before it should.
What I want to say, Suzie,
is a moment, gone
fifty years, is just a moment,
but you’re still here, unfleshed
in brightness—elfin, jittery, wan—
our arms looped as we turn
tight circles, round and round,
your eyes locked on mine.
originally published in New Ohio Review
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