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IV.

The subway train still rumbles into darkness.
We closed ourselves against the furious
rocking, imagined ourselves transported home,
with only the heavy air in our place-odors
as stale and sweatty as the city was old.
I think of they who never boarded, who
never rode like us-like vagabonds, defending

sleepy eyes against the blur of rolling
countryside. We were the lucky ones-
to laugh at a sleeping friend's pasty,
mummy-like face; to grab a neighbor's damp
stockinged foot while feeling for a pencil

or the last M & M.

V.
So youthful we were, our giggles sharp
and spontaneous on Parisian air.
How suave, asking for eclairs with newly
cultured lips and tongues. Words like
Tuileries and Rue de Rivoli rolled
out as golden carpets roll. We impressed
ourselves. Yet soon we flew home
to our nests with baby beaks open, hungry
for familiarity. None of us have been back
since. What happened to our broken
French? It still floats, mingles with the breaths

of those who never stood in Paris.

VI.
How can one exist-girl boy athelete student

cheerleader-fleshy shine toothy grin lips
blond hairs pom-pons-then be nothing,

be oblivion? How, instead of being reborn

in a seventeenth year to fly down bus steps

and touch-gloryl-American asphalt,

to be enfolded in parental arms. They would

have wanted McDonald's and clean blue jeans

and more life, which we hold out to them

with frustrated impotence. Numbly,
we fight the waves of loss that lap in us

and make us leak tears.

Valerie Kann

19