Gloria Parker

Stopped

The woman in the car next to mine
sobs and talks to someone who isn’t there.
For all I know she’s crazy.

How could I know? I might be myself.
I’ve cried at lights. I’ve reached for a hand
no one else sees. Is she angry or bereft...or both?

Does she dry her eyes before going into work,
pull herself together in Trader Joe’s parking lot?
Will sun glasses need to be worn inside? 

Rapt in whatever anguish it is, she doesn’t look
left or right, doesn’t move till the car behind her
honks its horn twice.

Strange how you could be buying apples
or ironing a shirt and a memory will crop up
like pain from a phantom limb.

I write this because I need to tell someone
how it still stings...the injustice of his
missing out on the rest of his life.

For all I know, I’ve been seen,
stopped at this very light, crying
and talking to the son who isn’t there.

A driver may’ve thought he’d pulled up
next to a mad woman, and maybe he had,
but maybe he’s just lucky

he doesn’t know how an empty seat can
fill a car, how there’s no telling sorrow
it’s time to stop talking.

Previously published in The Healing Muse

 

Gloria Parker is a retired primary school teacher. Her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Margie, Misfit Magazine, Nimrod, Loch Raven Review, Slipstream, Paterson Literary Review, Rattle, The MacGuffin, Hiram Poetry Review and elsewhere.