Early in the morning, on the train, you
think you have seen me before. Maybe
I’m that Spanish girl that lived in that
lonely house on the cul-de-sac. The one
with the yellow hair & extinguished heart.
You remember my firecracker eyes caked
in mascara & carbon monoxide, how all of
the boys used to howl when I walked by.

You look at me again, the story of my life
emerging from the dark circles under my
eyes. Yes, that’s it. You can almost remember
how I thought I found God sitting on a white
steeple, a brief moment in my life. The way my
blue jeans hugged my 16-year-old hips & curled
women’s lips, all at the same time.

It’s all coming back to you: my dead mother,
& my father – absence is a death too. How you
yearned, tossed & turned, to hold me & be my
sweaty, teenage lover. You remember that time
you tried to speak to me, but I was lost between
the lines of a book, swallowing words with my
eyes: chomp, chomp.

You remember how I left that small town,
a flash of yellow hair, a suitcase in the dark,
along with all my bones, starving for a ghost’s love.

You take another look, push down the lump
in your throat & I don’t seem that familiar anymore.

Published by Cardiff Review