ii. long wharf

the first of the new poems I'll share today is this one, I wrote it in 2014 after my friend P.L. dumped me (we'd only dated a month, not a huge deal). The original version is pretty frustrated and bitter, and I never liked it much, but I revisited it this week, after getting to say hello to some old stomping grounds in Boston earlier this month. I like it better now. Enjoy...



ii. long wharf


long wharf up ahead
I've made it.


it's shittily dark already and I'm cursing the flimsy
fashionable leather boots I chose this morning
I cannot slip again--
the surgeon didn't have an answer
for why both sides of the ankle broke
clearly,
when it should have been a sprain.

let's take a moment
watch the planes come and go
departures and arrivals
it's why I came here
breath in, two, three, four
exhale


I tell my students, this exercise,
you can do anywhere.

The sailboats wait at their moorings; it's just us.
Battened down against the wind
and winter.
No one else was stubborn
or foolish enough
to join for the early sunset.

It's 2002, I'm twelve, and mom dragged me here sailing.
It's cold, we stop by rowes wharf not rose wharf but rowes wharf
how terrible is that
but we stop and she hands me something to drink
called chai and
it's spiced
warm
it makes me feel a hundred years old
and something like wild wonder
I've searched for it, for that shop,
but I've never found it quite like that
day, and before we were sailing, just
me, alone with my mother, but more
each of us alone with our thoughts
quietly sipping our paper cups
full of memories
some I've only lately come to remember


twelve years old and twenty-four years
young and I recoil at the jellyfish and
sweet brine scent of barnacles
matted rope at the dockside
but draw myself up against the wind
and grin


the planes glide up and down
I'm here
breathing
counting
waiting
safe