Grand Re-Openings

Love is another kind of open,
a café that never closes.
The sign is flipped, the lights inside

are blinked-out stars, the only
employee is an old man
running a mop again and again

over the mess. The walls are
your muted heart who beats under
the café’s shut eyelid, the chairs

scattered like debris after
a windstorm, functional
but dizzied, glass rims stained

with that one shade of dated
red lipstick, coffee drips as
fevered brown tears down

smooth ceramic. It’s quiet now
but never for long. Have you seen
the handsome stranger, there

at the clouded window with
a peace flag of white lilies?
Have you seen how they hold

each flower’s lithe stem? Can you
hear their whisper begging
you, open the door…please try again.

*

Ashley Steineger is a holistic psychologist who believes poetry is the language of healing. Her poetry has appeared in The Night Heron Barks, Apricity Press, The Lumiere Review, and Palette Poetry, among others. She currently lives and writes out of Raleigh, NC, where she enjoys forest bathing, collecting tattoos, and untranslatable words.