After Your Last Appointment

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At the corner of Essex and Main

in a cold winter month

you hold signed papers in your hands,

and stand beneath the two street signs.

Cars rush by like separated pieces of a train,

almost pulling you after them,

this way, that way, this way

like everything always has,

everything on the way here,

until this job, this girl, this place, this time.

You’re seeing how wide the street is,

how much it can hold in one place,

all the lives that pass and disappear

in the minutes where you wait

until there is nothing between you

and where you parked.

                                    

                                -Brent Allard