Outside a Bistro in Marseille, 1968

Some wounds never close.
I only mentioned his necktie
in passing, then watched him
whip it off and drape it around
what was nearest to hand, saying
to the lamp post, Monsieur,
your taste is atrocious. Already
glorying in his strangeness
I didn’t know whether to laugh,
remain silent, or run away.
I call back through the years
because so much been lost
to silence. Because the place
no longer survives as what
it was when I loved it. This deep
need for what is gone. I keep seeing
it hanging green against gold
on the lamp post where I can
almost touch it.

---

Laura Ann Reed, a San Francisco Bay Area native, taught modern dance and ballet at the University of California, Berkeley before working as Leadership Development Trainer at the San Francisco headquarters of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in the United States, Canada and Britain. She is the author of the chapbook, Shadows Thrown (Sungold Editions, 2023). Laura and her husband live in the Pacific Northwest.