Poems From Providence - The Poet's Press

2
Across the hall, the spinster lay in her bed,
breasts taut against the tightened sheets, hands
folded expectantly on throbbing heart.
She will be eighty-five next week.
Her knotted fingers wrote the warning note.
The window is open, the burglar gate unlatched,
the door unlocked and welcoming.
She waits for the man who is coming to kill her:
the grocer’s boy, the laundry man, the super,
the mailman from Ponce, the plumber from Manila.
She waits for the man who is coming to save her:
the neighbor who smiles and helps her with packages.
The garbage truck covers his footsteps.
She grips starched sheets with painted nails.
The faces of killers and saviors begin to blur.
A streetwise silence sweeps after the garbage men,
sleek as the fur of an alleycat, stilling the air
save for the random scuttle of paper scraps, the roll
of soda cans, the rasp of a leaf against gutter,
the indefinable tread of the storm drain rats.
The wind invades the curtains, jostles her hair.
Her tears well up at the silence of fire escape.
No one has ever touched her.
No one ever will.
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