Wooden Tulip by Nina R. Alonso

Could have been me posed

in a window wearing that floral lace bra

another spotlit female body

for sale on Amsterdam’s red street 

Could have married exchange student

Hans already old when young

sensibly planning to be a dentist

dreamless life framed industrious

my shrunken world a dutiful

struggle to produce sons

Could be escape was accidental

as what did I know 

so it’s fitting when

he shows up at high school reunion

multiply divorced like me

wearing his frayed coat of years  

smoking a Cuban cigar on the balcony

waving his fingers ‘hello’ though

for a moment I don’t recognize 

this thick bellied lump of bacon

Could be the gift Hans brings me

all the way from the airport 

and presents with a not quite courtly bow

is right for this emptiest of occasions

a single wooden tulip

pink on an unbending stem. 

Nina R. Alonso's work has appeared in Ibbetson Street, Sumac, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, MomEgg, Muddy River Poetry Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, U. Mass. Review, New Boston Review, etc., and David Godine published her book This Body.