commuters

reaching into backspace she produces an address from
memory it all looks familiar, somehow sad these
houses, once new, now shabby thugs in want of repair,
roofs balding at the temple she points to her driver, a
foreign man, chatty, not quite at ease with his mouth
he reflected the neighbourhood; it had changed he said
rightly so between lights : on green they pulled into a
vacant lot, sat for a while in darkness, listening to the
radio: songs about love and loss she recognized from
when she was a kid, oh fuck, even then we were bad :
drugs, booze, abortions; ah youth the man laughed
when she suggested it, got him off no worries behind
Maple Ridge Secondary now attended by strangers,
people with attitude, thicker skin, so many of them
now she couldn't believe it, the loss stinging her
throat, walking alone, past Fern Cresent, 124th Street,
to Lougheed Hwy., sick, looking back, one last time.

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