Page 46 - The Geography of Women

32 Jack Fritscher

night hearin her foot steps disappear into thin air.
I never saw her the next day.
She packed up her bags at Mister and Missus Apple’s
an climbed on the Trailways bus with a one-way ticket to
St. Louis an just disappeared. Sometimes I think if there is
a hell, it must be a bus station roarin an chokin an people
tryin to kiss one last good-bye in the blue exhaust an all
bein pulled apart by that ol devil driver who keeps people
apart by callin “All Aboard” till you can only look at each
other through the glass with maybe the palm a your hand
pressed against the cold flat window until you can’t see
each other anymore.
I was glad I didn’t have to go through somethin like
that.
In my heart a hearts an my head a heads, I could hear
the echo a Jessarose herself singin about packin up all her
care an woe, cuz “here I go, singin low, bye-bye, black
bird. No one here can love and understand me, black bird,
bye-bye!”

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
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