Little Girl
A little girl sits
on the adjacent bus, smudged
skin, brown-black eyes, hair just like mine.
Her face presses against
the grimy glass, she is
dreaming of asphodel.
I’m staring at myself,
and she can’t see me
through the glass.
The buses shift. She lifts small fingers.
A simple wave acknowledges
an ephemeral thing,
I raise my hand too late.
She blows away,
wisteria in a late-summer storm.
Originally published in The Brownstone Review #9, 2000.
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