Someone is wondering where you are,
right now. Someone thinks they used to
know your maiden name, back in the day.
Someone catches a glimpse of you reflected
in the window of a bus, and follows that bus
to its last stop. Someone says to themselves
that your eyes never used to be that green—
or did they? Someone can still feel the marks
from being beaten black and blue at recess,
on the playground—were you there? were
you only watching? Someone remembers
your high, wild laugh and what you wrote
in everybody’s yearbook about freedom
being the second-most-important thing.
Someone has traced you through nine
changes of address and only wants to
talk—it won’t hurt you to talk, will it?
Someone has a new roll of duct tape—
no special reason—and someone has
found you now and someone is pulling
out electrical wires and cutting chains.
F. J. Bergmann edits poetry for mobiusmagazine.com and imagines tragedies on or near exoplanets. Work appears irregularly in Abyss & Apex, Analog, Asimov’s, and elsewhere in the alphabet. A Catalogue of the Further Suns won the 2017 Gold Line Press poetry chapbook contest and the 2018 SFPA Elgin Chapbook Award. She has many memories of recess and playgrounds.
Published 2/14/19