It’s sweet like whiskey,
the aftertaste of your divorce,
and you force yourself to keep wearing lipstick
like the magazines tell you to.
Someday (you hope) soon, you’ll feel brand new.
It’s all just a second act, really,
and that jam-packed, steely feeling at
the bottom of your
sentences is meant to be discarded,
dug apart, and left unmentioned.
The phonebooths all hug in on themselves,
shrugging against the rain
when you pass by,
and the sky is always a schizophrenic grey
these days, clouds marching away
to an unpromising horizon.
You phone once,
after the papers have been signed,
to hear the sound of a newly parallel life
on a recorded track
to hear that voice one last time
telling you they’ll call you back.