Loneliness
by A.M. 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.