Speak 2
by Catherine Arra
for Linda
She reminds me who I was, finds
me
in the tumult of divorce from
the man
I thought I knew, not as well as
I know her, the girl
who once sidled up to me¾high school teenagers
at a library table and said,
“What
are you reading?”
“Existentialism.”
“Tell
me everything you know about that.”
Brash girl, stranger
sat down uninvited, challenged
what I knew,
asked me to say it.
How dare she pull me out, expect
me to, but I did,
and now he’s leaving after 20 years.
Legalese served as tepid as last
night’s meal,
not saying, telling, why, how,
or who.
Singed by his iciness I never
thought for me,
his indifference to grief clamoring
up and down stairs
to tether an unbridled will to
leave.
Raw, unrivaled, the paralyzing
sting
of abandonment avalanches, until
she calls
from 1,500 miles away and says,
“Tell
me everything you know about that.”
* * * * *
"Speak 2" is from
Catherine Arra's poetry collection (Women in
Parentheses) (Kelsay Books, 2019)
Catherine Arra is the author of (Women in
Parentheses) (Kelsay Books, 2019), Writing in the Ether (Dos
Madres Press, 2018), and three chapbooks. Her poetry and prose have appeared in
numerous journals online and in print, and in several anthologies. Forthcoming
in 2020 from Finishing Line Press is a new chapbook, Her
Landscape, Poems Based on the Life of Mileva Marić Einstein.
Arra is a native of the Hudson Valley in upstate New York, where she teaches
part-time and facilitates local writing groups. Find her at www.catherinearra.com
Soul sister v. "abandonment avalanches." Too true not to be true.
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