couldn’t sleep
so i walked into town at three a.m.,
alone in my ankle-length black trench coat,
armed with little else but keys and an iPod,
and through the street—
then empty.
I looked for haunted things
in store windows,
like darkness,
old diamond-studded clocks,
wind-up monkeys with cymbals,
mannequins with no heads wearing Talbot’s;
nothing moved, and nothing spooked:
none of the houses, freshly painted to preserve
some elusive history, (elusive
since Dana Hall, since soccer moms
at Starbucks in puffer vests,
since Unitarian Universalists and United Methodists
just down the road)
awoke to prove their envy of my movement:
safe now, freely I walked on sidewalk and road alike
and freely my mind wandered:
who, of those I then knew, would be the one
I’d learn to love?
they were there with me, alone before dawn:
walking, wandering, listening, waiting;
and when the dance was over,
I lowered the volume,
screen glowing aqua with my touch,
and drifted back down the street,
through the stone archway opening
toward the long path back to sleep
and Claflin Hall.
………………
©erika haines 2014
