Knowing the Score by Robin Wright

Knowing the Score

My friend planned to meet me tonight,
but instead, she sits on a barstool
at the Peephole, chatting
with a sixty-something bank exec.

He told her she smells like vanilla,
that her long, straight, auburn hair
is that of a goddess, and he’d like
to take her home. He added
his wife died two years ago,
hasn’t touched a woman since.

She tells me all this over the phone
after she kicked back a shot of vodka
and accepted his invitation.
When I ask if she’s okay, she laughs,
says if desire were measured in yards,
she and this guy would be football fields.

I think about how fields come alive
during a game, players running, catching,
crashing into each other, but how empty
the gridirons are between games, how my friend
drifts from relationship to relationship,
how she might tell me she’s not worried
if she wins or loses
as long as there are more games ahead.

*

Robin Wright lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in One Art, As it Ought to Be, The Drabble, The New Verse News, Bombfire Lit, Young Ravens Literary Review, Spank the Carp, Rat’s Ass Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Sanctuary, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her first chapbook, Ready or Not, was published by Finishing Line Press in October of 2020.