Elegy for Waiting for You

The dark clock by the old train station
where the people come and go and me,
I’d stand there and I’d see that clock
with its hands that wouldn’t stop
even though you’d think they’d be too
weighted down with all the time
those hands were holding.

It’s easy to wait for love when you
know it’s on the next train or even
the one after that. But that was the problem.
You were never on any of those. I must have

known that but sometimes we will do anything
to breathe love alive. We will stand there
in a too-thin coat, shivering in the almost
dark, waiting forever for the train I wanted
so much for you to be on and which always
seemed moments away.

*

That night, moonless,

there was enough room Inside me
for my heart to bulge up, rocket
up to the space where I could still
see your goodbye eyes, flat as a galaxy map
Where stars are pressed against black velvet.
And like a galaxy, remembering you went into
The billions, of matter, of time, of how
Many years do the light from any of those
Dull, finished stars take to reach the earth.

*

Francine Witte is a flash fiction writer and poet, and the author of the flash collection RADIO WATER. Her newest poetry book, Some Distant Pin of Light, has just been published by Cervena Barva Press. Her work has been widely published, and she is a recent recipient of a Pushcart Prize. She lives in New York City. Please visit her website francinewitte.com. She can be found on social media @francinewitte.