this place

This place we visited once  

before we were married  

and now we revisit again years later.  

But past phantoms flicker present.  

Ghosts emerge from fog;  

Libra season is still here.  

How I recognize the streets as the same  

as before but do not recognize us as the same  

as before. Remember? It was eight years ago.  

How you bought me a new coat—  

since you deemed  

my nicotine-stained, used,  

old, orange corduroy coat unfit  

for this vacation.  

How I was a girl who straddled absurdity—  

still legally in her first marriage,  

waking up next to her second husband,  

but back then I did not yet know we would marry.  

I just don't relate to that little,  

proud-of-her-new-jacket girl anymore.  

The city's still windy and cold;  

you're still an old man, but I'm not still a little kid.  

The journey I made is so far—  

that old orange coat's journey,  

from a sweatshop in Indonesia,  

to Target, to various owners, to a thrift store,  

to me, to a dump with only its two cigarette burns  

for its tangerine company. Only one cigarette burn  

made by me. I am now more like that second coat,  

new from Macy's, special for a trip,  

I feared I took too long to pick out and  

was entirely too nice for me. That coat  

now lives in our closet still; its button,  

resewn and ready for this night,  

a night in this place,  

this place we visited once  

before we were married.