You Think It Is Safe To Cross by Millicent Borges Accardi

After “One Train May Hide Another,” by Kenneth Koch

When you are hit by that fear of preferring 
not to talk with someone who approaches. 
When you stop to turn away and pull a copy 
of Tristram Shandy out of the bookcase,
when you want to read the next line 
When you look to see who has already been there,
hiding in the corner of the party you had said
you’d rather not attend to, like scalding water 
down your back, Bartleby who preferred not to.
When you would have doubled a world full of 
couples, satiated and two- by two-zie-ing in front
and behind you as you party the lanes of vapidity,
amicability. When it is safe to leave after everyone 
has gone. When one cat might disappear for a day 
and the coyote thought you knew is close at hand, 
when we worry and when we know of things, about
the eternal reverse of doing everything all over again 
and you are 12 years old at Longfellow Elementary 
on the way to board the big blue bus in Long Beach. 
You are waiting to cross. When the guard 
is on the other side of Wardlow Road and spinning 
a yellow octagonal sign while touching a small child 
on the shoulder. It is then that you first think about 
staying, about how you might learn to love someone
in the same way that they might love you back.

Millicent Borges Accardi, a Portuguese-American writer, has four poetry collections, most recently, Quarantine Highway (FlowerSong).  Among her awards are National Endowment for the Arts, CantoMundo, California Arts Council, and NYC Foundation for Contemporary Arts fellowships. This summer she was a mentor at Adroit and AWP writer to writer programs.

4 November 2024