And We Were Done

Intently studying the broccoli – as if to peer
into its green florets to conjure up
the emerald they'd be in searing blasts
of carefully administered humidity,
and fearful of the brown they'd turn if left,
abandoned, on the stove to burn –

she crept, for seconds, just outside
her facial scaffolding: revealed an aching
tension in pursed anxious lips: betrayed in taut
translucent pink and beige skin, mercilessly
stretched like tarpaulin, and infinitely
unassuaged – a deep unhappiness: encaged

as well within the orbital entablature
around her hollow-gazing eyes: drafty
window casings in a vacant uninhabitable house:
which made one understand why she more
normally retreated to disguise – as I surmise
she often did, when, as she saw me,

and her arsenal of embryonic sighs aborted
silently in New York’s upper west side
market air, she blinked to let me know she
knew that I was there. One makes provision
against dangers of which, clearly, I was one.
She glazed a smile and looked away:

and we were done.


.