Every woman has a reason to be beautiful
Hers was the way her eyes went partly cloudy
in whatever light she had, the way they
drifted into a shadow that obscured her smile,
how her face cleared so surprisingly
at a few words of praise
After months of leaving messages unanswered
she would phone well after midnight and plead
for me to drive to her apartment for a drink,
but I knew it was really for me to hold her
afterwards until she fell asleep
“Come with me, Bill,” she would plead
as if no man ever had,
and remembering the tragedy in her voice,
I sometimes want to sob
I stopped answering her calls when my urine
burned so badly I groaned over urinals,
the nails of one hand digging at the tile,
learning the hard way I was only one of many
On Sunday mornings leaning over half read news
at a table in the sunny courtyard off a coffee shop
where I go in hopes of seeing her one last time
walk past the wrought iron fence with the sway
of other young women of her kind –
trendy, well-dressed, bright and desperate
for a touch of love and worship –
I tell god, if there is a god somewhere,
god must do better
Women, like Cheryl, in their twenties or fifties,
I complain to god in the only words I know,
are nothing more or less than the beautiful daughters
of older men like me