Seats 27 D and F

   by Carol Sanger

Going nowhere, she says, just home 
on a Tuesday night from Dallas and 
some place else before that. She coughs 
long and juiceless, shrugs me a what-can-you-do.  
Everything about her looks, feels black 
and white, except for the red across her lips.  
Older than young, she is still 
younger than me.  Her hair 
falls forward like a curtain 
so I go back to my book 
and remember when my life was a river 
never setting me ashore. I was 
a paper cup waiting for some large thing – 
I imagined an orb, gold and glowing – 
to fill me: throat, chest, womb 
to attach wings to my feet so I could fly.  
But it doesn’t happen like that. 
You are given pieces to collect, to store away.  
In failing times, you pull them out to look 
for a pattern, a picture, some purpose. 
Then one day, you are aware that someone 
is waiting for you in a truck in Tucson, 
two old dogs in the back, pictures 
of grandkids in his wallet. 
He has come to take you home.