Cocktails

by Laurie Byro


She follows him, clever boy, he is the miracle, a Pied Piper of every town, witty,
handsome, adorable, a woman's dream. After a while, her friends stop
speaking to her, turn away, tune her out, envious, she says, of her good fortune.

She sees him anyway, despite the two restraining orders, despite the words
hurled like stones: bitch, trash, spider-cunt. The bruises are like a painting,
Starry Night with all those swirling colors. He dances like that, laughing

the words skim over her head like stones, he is magic. Soul-mate, eternity.
The love-bite on her stomach, at first bloody hot, almost a proof, his
declaration of ownership. It is sexy, red, throbbing-lipstick but as the night fades

to purple, maybe not so sexy, not so tender. Was his passion a wilding-almost
like that poor girl in the Park? What was wrong with wanting one last meeting,
a cocktail? Words drip and slide down her back like icicles but still she

thaws, he is so sweet really, like a frosting. No one understands. Those silly books:
Co-Dependent? No! More..... and more and more. She tells her friends, when
they don't hang up, she'll go to her grave believing. That. He loves her, really.

She just feels it in her bones.

Hear lies, hear lies,
here lies.


* * * * *

Laurie Byro has seven collections of poetry published, most recently: Hopeless Romance, (Cholla Needles Arts), Deux & Other Sorrows and La Dogaressa and Other Poems (Cowboy Buddha Press). Four books of poetry were published prior to this, among them Gertrude Stein's Salon and Other Legends (Blue Horse Press) and The Bloomsberries and Other Curiosities (Kelsay Books): both contain work that received a New Jersey Poetry Prize. Laurie lives in New Jersey with her husband where she has been facilitating Circle of Voices poetry discussion in New Jersey libraries the last 23 years.