That’s when I decided it was time to refill
the rapidograph with red ink
and begin a series of one-liners in red -
the red saturating the eye with disbelief.
Around noon, with the aha moment on break
I began color-coding departures
just to keep track of who went where and why.
The love letters in the sand had washed away
with the rest of the whites.
This was probably a good thing
though I was hard pressed to convince myself
as well as passersby
who looked at me as if I had two heads.
But I do, I told a news anchor
who had taken the wrong right turn
and ended up in our neighborhood.
But I do have the answer, I repeated,
though, by then, she couldn’t have cared less.
