Three Years After You Die, I Have My First Date
because isn’t it time to stretch
limits, test waters, live
out all those clichés?
What do you do for fun
he asks and when I
blank he reveals
the sports teams he follows,
cardio workouts,
twisting spiritual path.
I’m a real beach nut, he says
but he’s lost me to you
at the water’s edge
in your black trunks,
that dive through
the breakers, your
effortless crawl.
Because didn’t it feel
we belonged to the
couple we made in the
Victorian town
with its bistros,
its roped-off
dunes of nesting plovers,
the red-haired guy
we rented bikes from,
its lagoons full of swans?
*
Roberta Spivek is a Philadelphia poet. Her poems have appeared in Friends Journal, Muleskinner Journal, Naugatuck Review, New Croton Review, Ritualwell, Women’s Studies Quarterly and other publications. She has spasmodic dysphonia, a speech disorder.
Uffda! Hard to move on when memories are still healing a broken heart!