Don't ask me who she was, crying
her blue blue eyes out on that hollow front porch
I walked right on by. Me: unblinking, hunched;

Her: sobbing, boo-hoo. & it was almost 6 pm,
fall, the early darkness & cold. Her sorrows remain
unknown; don't ask me why she cried.

I'll never know what she might have felt though,
in my head & heart, she feels it forever—
long nights of cold-autumn sadness, pine needles

bunched in smug fists all up & down the branches
overhanging her porch. I had my own problems
but no one caught me pulling my hair out

on Main Street, yelling with rage in the parking lot.
At least I had the good sense to keep myself
to myself. I had my own problems then, & now too.

I have my own problems now! My own colossal anger
& a sadness like overgrown backyard grass & I miss her
& would comfort her & would build a house

for us to move into together, with no front porch,
no loneliness, & one great big front window with curtains
we could open or close whenever we wanted.

____

So many hyphenated memories! I don't know if we're limited by memory (she's probably smiling now, a long way from the sorrows of that porch) or liberated by it (in my green office but suddenly not).