She sits surrounded by
winter-weary mothers feeding their
babies, 24 degrees outside, all slush
and dirty February snow, the floors
gritty with salt and sand but the sky
a relentless blinding blue.
Loneliness is an invisibility
cloak; I avert my eyes from
the sorrows of strangers, but her grief
runs like a current through the metal
handle of my cart, and I have no
words for her. I have only flowers—
a ten-dollar bouquet in a crappy blue
plastic cup that I set on her table
before returning to my daughter,
but I think of her now when I'm out
walking. I tell myself stories, which is to say
I remember things I thought
I'd long forgotten, how I was a turbulent
freshman on the bridge outside the science
center, staring down at the cars
and thinking of Greek deponent verbs,
of my dead father and my classmates'
perfect Topsider shoes, A man came by
and spoke to me. Jump, he said—
—jokingly I'm sure—and his girlfriend
hit him hard on the bicep as if to say,
Idiot and Why do I even bother?
But his voice still carries across
the years, even now I hear
it on the bridges I cross and I have
no words stronger than his, I have nothing
but baby's breath and grocery store
carnations, Gerbera daisies
and a single weak-necked rose.