Goat Cheese Beet Swirl, Black Walnut, Tea Time, and Catching Fire

Presided proudly beside dull vanilla and chocolate chip.

I got caught up in the plethora of flavors.

You said you liked my plain black blouse.

I blushed, adjusted my fogged-up glasses over the pandemic pink face mask,

The one with glittering kitten whiskers and blinking white lights.

You remind me of the man in the board game section at Target.

Circling the aisles, you kept returning to where I was.

The crinkle of your hazel eyes suggesting a smile.

I may have bought an old chest of drawers from you.

When I came to collect it, we talked about Christmas traditions, our children.

Mine 1,500 miles away, yours raucous in the next room.

Did I see you on the Cedar Avenue Bridge,

Stuck in rush hour traffic?

Our windows open wide, blaring Roy Orbison’s Only the Lonely.

I was so caught up in choosing,

In remembering and imagining your face

I forgot to ask you to share my key lime gelato.

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up (2017), she is a two-time recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, Vita Brevis, Adelaide, Clockwise Cat, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Ariel Chart, Poetica Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Tuesdays at Curley’s and After the Equinox.