Anchor
In a seaside Italian hideaway, I took a photo
of her, her hair floating away in the wind as she sat
on a wall next to a shadowless planter. Shadows
couldn’t hold us, either, neither history nor future, nor
the strange light of the half-storm, until we sat in our rented
apartment and she taught me to sing for courage
to continue ‒ that night, to Genoa (eating garlic
spaghetti with our fingers on the train), to Barcelona
(with our Gaudi night), back to college. But
something broke on the train to Toulouse,
and by the time we reached Paris, we had sewed
on our shadows and grounded ourselves. I tilted
my head away from her across the aisle (our own
scent strong from the weeks far from a shower),
remembered the cat, Screamer, him warming her back
while she read, and tried to imagine our friendship
as a vase, perched, not yet shattered.