Paige Sullivan

Each time you happen to me all over again.

—from The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton

Blue light of dusk, a chest
of drawers and a mattress heavy
with the last hour’s rain
waiting for someone on a sidewalk.
The thud and click footfalls
of me and the dog. Jasmine,
jasmine is always the culprit, scent
as deep as nose to neck, shirt,
pillowcase, your mouth and the bench.
How many times have I taken
these long, plodding walks, somber
ache of knowing another you
is somewhere out there, thinking
of me, carrying on, the wide window
and the yellow coverlet receding
to footnote memory? The side street,
where you set down my coffee
and insisted on holding me, full
of buds that are now a riot of azaleas
that will become something else
by summer, something I’ll see anew.

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Paige Sullivan is a poet and writer living in Atlanta. A graduate of the creative writing programs at Agnes Scott College and Georgia State University, her work has appeared or will soon appear in Harpur Palate, Puerto del Sol, Cherry Tree and other journals.