The Walk Home, Late at Night

                                                                                                              By John Grey

You lived in the abandoned tenement,

behind the store window,

in the dumpster behind the bar.

 

Walking the city late at night,

I could never part ways with you.

 

Not when you were underfoot with the weeds,

or gleaming from the empty lot

like glass shards in the moonlight.

 

That was your face above the neck

of the woman wanting to be paid

for the use of her body,

and behind the wheel of the car

with the tinted windows.

that drove slowly by.

 

My shoes clip-clopped as I took

that short cut through the square

but the echo was all yours.

 

I was vulnerable, ready to be taken.

On the church steps, down the alley,

you could have had me anywhere.

 

For that was you on the rooftop,

and with the rats that scurried across the floor

of the shuttered vegetable market.

 

All you needed was your knife, my chest,

and the plunge of the blade

would have been quick and merciful.

 

But you didn’t strike.

Maybe you figured, the fear, the tension,

would be so much greater the next time.

 

For the next time is your most insidious weapon.

It continues to be my weakness.

About the Author:

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, California Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, “Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside the Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the Seventh Quarry, La Presa and Doubly Mad.