Perhaps you are late to work
or on your way to an
afternoon

in bed with your blue-eyed,
fine-boned faithless lover.

Navigating the cobble stone,
you walk alleyways stained

in nameless molds and
young men’s urination
games.

Your body takes in the court,
The White Horse, the florid
market­place with its balcony
of exiled clocks, Slavic clogs
and unloved

lacquered canes planted like
question marks along the
filigreed gates.

Today, you are
not unhappy.
So when it comes--
precise as flight a lifting
beyond anything you’ve
known -

what can you do
but accept this language
unfolding out of the sky:

You will live this life alone--
And you will write--

- Susan Rich