By Connemara Wadsworth

The night stretches long—before the man
in the next seat and I introduce ourselves,
first the simple things, the world of work,
how we made those choices as if spinning
out the first threads of friendship.
The plane darkens, others sleep,
we keep talking.

I will meet the husband in my failing
marriage, he his girlfriend. Is it my
hunger or sitting side by side in the depth
of darkness, not looking eye to eye,
that sucks me into the fleeting intimacy
of fellow-travelers? I want to sew
his friendliness into me

want his name, phone number,
want to keep that ease. I don’t.
He moves toward warmth and I
toward lonely facts. We walk out
apart. I watch him at the other end
of bags that circle and circle until
claimed. I see how I am a stranger
grasping at what won’t be.

About the Author

Connemara Wadsworth's chapbook, The Possibility of Scorpions, about the years her family lived in Iraq in the early 50’s, won the White Eagle Coffee Store Press 2009 Chapbook Contest. Her poems are forthcoming or appeared in Prairie Schooner, Solstice, Chautauqua, Bellevue Literary Review, and Valparaiso. Her poem, “Mediation on a Photo” was a winner of The Griffin Museum of Photography’s Once Upon a Time: Photos That Inspire Tall Tales. Connemara and her husband live in Newton, Massachusetts.