the children, but I’m so lonely everywhere
& this foreign place just amplifies it. I stop walking
along the pavement just outside of a closed down
convenience store, & I look up at the building across the street:

it’s a nightclub (I’m past my clubbing days, but I remember
them too well), but it’s morning, of course, people commuting
to work, & the club’s been closed for a few hours now.
There’s a dissonance to this facade: a few of the windows

actually have plywood over them & the sign is dim
& the smoking area looks desolate, uninviting, grim.
This place must’ve been so lively just last night—-
how has it changed so quickly? I never imagined this freshly unmarried state

I find myself in; the sex was such a minor part of our loving,
but all I can think about now is the way his body
would relax onto mine after he came, how he’d kiss
my neck, spread my legs apart & lick my cunt until

I’d orgasm oh so sweetly. I may never touch his body again.
My phone lights up with a message from tonight’s hook-up—-
I told him I wanted to be bound, spread apart, fucked so well
I went into an ecstasy that made me forget every past lover,

even my husband. Ex-husband. I look back up at the club,
forgetting how long I had just been standing there.
I reach into my purse to retrieve a cigarette, light it.
The club will open again later tonight, fill its doors

with college sudents, drunk & making out with new,
fake lovers. Breakups ached back then, but
you still had time to heal; did I have time to heal? But,
even then, must everything be rectified? Or once things close

their doors in the early morning, may it just stay that hollowed shell?
Must bustling life always reenter come nightfall? I stub out my cigarette
& continue walking down the street, looking for a cafe
just lonely enough to soothe my soul.