Author Information
"After Eight to Lena"
by Jeph Johnson
On the way to Café Lena,
after disembarking the 72,
on the corner of 82nd and Foster,
close to where my former beloved
now lives with her husband Carlos,
I saw her ghost,
much younger,
on a bus bench,
weeping.
I walked towards her,
steadfast,
without the restrained tension
I had always believed would occur.
There sat her apparition,
crying.
Teresa never cried.
Looking down at her again, her tears were audible
"Are you okay?"
Rather than ignore me or mutter back
she broke into a diatribe against her boyfriend…
"He's going to kill me"
The foreign words
from the animated
specter of my beloved
reminded me of
Teresa's abusive ex-husband
who had stolen her tears
from me
years before we met
when sentimentally sent flowers
and sincerely written prose
fell on dry eyes...
but this girl on the bus bench was sobbing
"I lost the house keys again
second time this week
He's going to kill me"
As a man prone to exaggeration
I wondered how literal she was,
but her rose petal eyes
revealed the truth to me.
The 14 came and I spent the next twenty seconds
nonchalantly flashing
my hour-expired transfer
to the driver.
I had no answer for her keys
and this was no time for
Mr. Sarcastic
to offer her mine
I shut my mouth,
sat three seats behind her
and took out my pen.
In front of Lena
disembarking again I
handed her a note.
Through the blur of her tears it read:
"I want nothing more than to take your pain away"
