signs

by

             She still believes in signs and I don't
know how she can place her fate in the hands
of a shooting star, a red-eye flight's flashing
lights, her favorite song fading out the second
she switches on the radio. When we were seven
and a half we watched two dragonflies chase
each other across my grandmother's garden
and swore we would always run side by side,
our paces never straying too far from each other's
waiting warmth. We believed we understood
what love was but now my eyes are dry and her
clothes are always soaked with carmine drops
of crushed devotion she keeps trying to squeeze
from every stranger's velvet grip. Now I rarely see
rainbows, and at night I pray for dreamless sleep.
I haven't spoken to a fortune teller in years, and
when a man's eyes meet mine from across a room
pulsing with possibilities, I almost always look
away. In my mind she is still standing in the middle
of a golden field, palms open, heart wide, lifting
her face to a stretch of sapphire sky sparkling
like all the days we thought we had ahead of us.