Dragonfly Was Here
by Eve Wood
Funny how the dragonfly resembles a bullet
Crashing as it does into my glass,
Spilling wine like someone else’s lifeblood;
The strongest among us, fleeting and small.
The bug dies on my table, drunk on its own savagery
While my hands remain holding onto each other here in my lap.
Down the street, a woman blows a kiss to a wall
And the gray day pulsates
Another moment of evacuation
As the sky breaches and recedes.
Later, I find my own face across the stilled surface of my coffee,
The conquest of lines, bruises and abbreviations,
A fallen glance,
A flea bite on the cheek, like a tiny fist.
On the corner, someone else’s child rests his head in his hands,
A gesture arrived at too early,
And the mother pushes and swells through the crowds
To get a last glimpse of a dress.
The crayons on the table are meant to be used.
“Write something,” the waiter suggests,
Sopping up the wine with a napkin.
Words like “quietude” and “liberation” come to mind,
But the face in my coffee, now subdued by the cream,
No longer looks like me.