I Find You

I find you
in slushy cereal aisles
neon yellow box
your childhood favorite
striped scarf hugging
your weary neck
when did those flecks
of silver become
a whole head of gray?

Milk, eggs.
You consider a loaf
of white, only to replace it
with whole grain
I wonder if that’s because
of someone else
or if you’ve simply changed

In the checkout
I think you see me
I smile, the kind of smile
you give someone
you once loved
and have to pretend
you never did

Excuse me,
you say, reaching over
to grab a USA Today
You skim the headlines
with the same intensity
you used to read me

I wait for you to say something
but maybe I am unrecognizable,
hazel eyes faded with fatigue
smooth skin covered in worry lines
in indent from my wedding ring
I took off only a week after he left

I should say something
If only to wish you well
to ask if you’re happy
as we both imagined, once
we would be:
making plans
for an afternoon wedding,
the little cottage we planned
to renovate before
we let our careers
take us hundreds of miles apart

& yet we are both here
me, visiting my dying father
waiting for life
to make sense

You turn a smile
on your face,
expectant.

I open my mouth
to say a million words
the words I’ve rolled under my tongue
like hard candy that never
melts the same words
that probably crept into
my marriage without
my permission

A little girl runs towards you
fairy white hair
the daughter I always knew
you’d have
she has your stubborn jaw
and dimples

And I know
you don’t see me at all.

Erin Jamieson holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Miami University of Ohio. Her writing has been published in over fifty literary magazines, and her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She teaches at the Ohio State University.