the train pulling away,
25 minutes in the snow.
Crystal wind, waiting
for the next one. This
obsession to keep
what I have (please
don't dream of
opening my closet)
This two hour metro
ride to ballet, past
last year's oak leaves,
still hanging on.
In the warmth
of the train, I want
one calm day, want to
curl into quilts and
not hear the cat
being sick or worry
about what isn't
working. I want to
walk into the poster
of the family at
the beach, slip into
the young woman's
perfect skin, taut legs
I never felt I had,
even at 16. I need to
grab that glistening
margarita from
her hands and snag
the blond surfer
next to her
for one night and
more than anything,
that smile that
gives away how
right now there is no
thing she would trade a
moment of her life for
I let my long hair down
over my skin, made a
hair cove you could
wait out the rain in.
So strange to hear your
voice again on tape.
I kept it as if I would
follow you and need
your words by heart.
Every freeze frame is
still a ghost. And the
scars: your hand print
on the grey wall. I
thought I'd left that
night behind. But back
in my old house, the
maple pushing against
glass as it did that
night I couldn't keep
you hostage, even
when the lights went
out but heard you on
the radio and taped you
laughing on the air,
your hair, a listener
called in to say, all
tussled, with a chicken
sandwich made by
someone special
that I was wearing the color
of emeralds the first time
Fatimi called. So long in the
past—why do I remember
the phone message in my
college dorm: "boy with
accent called, will call back
later" and that, just back
from Cornell, I wore a
matching emerald lambs'
wool sweater and tight green
skirt with a slit. Is it chance
the name "emerald" comes
from an ancient Persian word
thru the corruption of Latin?
And that the man, whose
photograph, half of my life
ago, is still in a drawer in a
house I'm rarely in? Green as
the wind in Lorca's sleep
walking ballad with the horse
in the mountains and the ship
upon the green sea. Sure, I
wanted him under a gypsy
moon, dreaming on a verandah
(maybe the loveliest word
in the English language, nicer
than cellar door.) The green
skirt, lost now but the green
wool still in a closet, mystical
because I wore it that night
tho he never touched me in it,
as Lorca's great stars of frost
and those shadows of fish that
open the way to the dawn.
When my hair was black,
emeralds must have gone with it,
or even auburn. Now its blonde
but there's less green in my life
than the echo of green hair, eyes
of cold silver. In the garage, just
green cotton I wore in a high
school play, covered measles
with white lotion, a little green
velvet for ballet. But not intense,
jewel-like, the color I feel just
hearing Fatimi's message. Each
word like those sacred texts the
Moguls of India inscribed in
emeralds because they
loved them so much
Lyn Lifshin's Another Woman Who Looks Like Me was published by Black Sparrow in 2006 and selected for the 2007 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence. Also out in 2006 was The Licorice Daughter: My Year with Ruffian from Texas Review Press. Lifshin's recent books include Before It's Light (Black Sparrow, 2000), Cold Comfort (Black Sparrow, 1997), In Mirrors (Presa Press), Upstate: An Unfinished Story (Foot Hills) and The Daughter I Don't Have (Plan B Press). Her poems have appeared in most literary and poetry magazines and she is the subject of a film, Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass, from Women Make Movies. Her web site is www.lynlifshin.com.