On the first day after she met him
she went out shopping,
ran her credit card bill high
to buy new clothes and jewels
in antique styles that suited his,
all forest greens and azure blues
like noonday skies.

On the second day she got her hair done,
had it dyed to dazzling
sunshine-colored brightness,
hoping that its daylit tones
might sooth the longing
in his voice when he had talked
of times before.

On the third day she sat beside
her silent telephone, checked its
batteries and phoned her voice mail
service twice, before she forced
a small, self- deprecating laugh,
and thought to buy a mystic
crystal charm instead.

The fourth day found her
on the internet, downloading
ageless songs of love and loss,
of mythic spells, and demon loves,
of maids betrayed, and young men's lies,
and dreams turned into nightmares
when the magic fails.

Five days after she met him,
she went out wandering past a maze
of silent night clubs, asking after
one that no one seemed to know,
searching for a door, a song, a person
she'd found once under the perfect stars,
but never, ever would again.

---

Marcie Lynn Tentchoff is an Aurora Award winning poet/writer from the west coast of Canada. She edits for multiple magazines, and her own work has appeared in such publications as Weird Tales, On Spec, and Aeon. Her poetry collection, Sometimes While Dreaming, is available through Sam's Dot Publishing.

"The title and first few lines of this poem lodged themselves in my brain and demanded to have a poem surrender itself to be written to suit. Luckily, the poem didn't fight too hard."