Picture Strip in My Underwear Drawer

You, in a photo booth at a wedding reception,
wearing that navy-blue suit.
There are four frames and I study them: tilt
of your head, toy ukulele in your hands—
wonder where I was when light flashed
in your face. Because I cried
in the bathroom that night, after our fight,
balled up napkin in my fist, listening
to high heels click on the cold tile. I wanted
to disappear. And that feeling. Like the scar
I’ve had since I was a child, beneath my chin—
I’m forever touching it. The wound, it’s sear,

and always, the years. A counting of.
How many, how many now, have I loved you?

*

Cynthia Ventresca wrote her first poem at seven years old after receiving a typewriter as a Christmas gift. Publication credits include American Life in Poetry, Orbis Quarterly International Literary Journal, 3rd Wednesday, Dreamstreets, Glassworks, The Main Street Rag, Sky Island Journal and One Sentence Poems. Pending publication in SWWIM Every Day, the Bay to Ocean Journal, and Eunoia Review. She was longlisted for the 2023 Palette Poetry Rising Poet Prize and serves as an assistant poetry editor for Narrative Magazine. She is currently working on her first manuscript of poems.