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She Looks for the Day
by Danielle Beazer Dubrasky

She looks for the day you rode the train past alfalfa fields
that shimmered of yellow stalks in the afternoon

when you cupped her chin and turned her face toward you.
You were her mirror‐a blue sea in which she found not herself

but a boy looking up at her window, who memorized maps by flashlight
and followed a strange road to her cul de sac.

She looks for you behind mirrors as if the river could flood
the rooms where you held her in quiet breathing.

The mirror shows only one face with eyes that haven't slept for years‐
she wanders past closed windows, stares at the alcove of your locked door.

She looks for you in stories of an old father weeping over his bound son
before he finds the ram in the thicket between leaded panes.

When did the water freeze to glass?
That boy still lives in your hands,

now supplicants over an altar centuries old.
She turns away from the mirror and watches your lamplight until dawn.

 

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