The Last
I'd breathed steam
at the book sale tables, recorded
some appealing titles:
Sombreros Are Becoming.
Mango Summer.
But the good ones'd gone.
Outside, amazed, numb-rendered, I thought
of buying a bag of Twisties,
dangling my feet
over the lagoon.
Good child's
company for a cold dusk.
Instead I huddled.
Red-handed girl
waiting for the city lights, I chattered
in my journal and canoes reeled
in and out of the water.
When the lights finally winked
each other out
of hiding
I went back to mine, my own spines.
Standing quiet, homing up
in the lift, I thought,
You tried to teach us the sadness of Plath.
We couldn't learn it. That wind
had not
boxed our ears.