Brief Reunion
For one short moment
in a boardwalk
cafe, under myrtle leaves,
she smiled and was not despised
by a brother of her youth.
She guessed he didn't know
her past sins
of anger and dark revenge,
for the small humiliations,
of tennis shoes in winter
and empty bars at three a.m.,
for those small desperate hours,
when the difference between hell and heaven
was a dead rose.
And because his gentle, ignorant eyes claimed
her as human,
named her chosen,
for one brief moment,
she returned to that sweet womb
of innocence and sterile love.
And she guessed he didn't know
she'd fallen and walked godless
in the fields of the sun.
© 1985 J.L.Stanley
