Loneliness

by Andrew Broadous

June 2019

It’s morning, but evening

primroses turn up their hoods

anyway, quietly concede over

lips of concrete. On this jog,

the air is damp and bashful like

me, like this doe emerging from

the brush. She crosses my path

and lingers on toy limbs, cocks

her careful head once, then

never again. No matter how

hard the step, she halts on the 

fringe of rain like a plush

ornament, this wild girl too

smart to trust me, too curious

to watch me dart on toward

some unknowable future. It’s

the possibility of knowing

that keeps her here, her ears

two leather soles, her eyes

spit-shined black. I want her

to find a loneliness in me like

she finds beechnuts, the diurnal

redolence of primrose, and the

kind of rain that hangs in

static above oak and agave.

Instead, she finds an interloper,

mild-mannered with no agenda,

affords me a final look,

then steals away into a more

natural life without me.

And I continue my course, past this

one rose idea that we truly had

something special.