Love: That First Time

by Linda Cue

Never mind these last days of spring.
Still, I’m walking as the sun sets.

Where’s everyone? There should be others
out here. I see them in dreams gazing

out from office windows with the blinds
pulled down. They are not different

from me in the streets on a Sunday
looking straight ahead avoiding

my face in the glass of restaurants
book stores, and cafes.

You are not here. Though, I wait for you
leaning inside the frame of door ways

and at bus stops. I look up, from
a book, a newspaper, or away, from

a conversation to discover the outline of a
mistaken face. Sometimes, a long way away.

There are walls, boundaries, a trap, right?
Like the trees in line along the streets

with leaves even at dusk bright
so bright pulling my eyes up up

into its blends of greens. Then,
nothing above but a deep blue sky.

I could live there, stay there,
forever there.

Last spring you took a train
to Buffalo, New York to

watch the trees, from Florida
to Ohio sway in the dark.

Then, stand without leaves
from Ohio to Buffalo finally

in opened fields of
melting snow.

No one knows about your trip
to see the snow.

No one knows about
any of your trips.

So, where to go now?
Inside the Cuban café

on the corner of main street
to sit beneath the warm

air of the ceiling fan or
out front under umbrellas

with the white women
smiling at each other behind

sunglasses and coffee cup?
No one would know

I was there. No one
would be surprised.

Linda Cue currently lives in her hometown of Gainesville, Florida. She attended the University of Florida and earned a B.A. degree in English in 1999. She also earned a graduate degree in Library and Information Studies from Florida State University after deciding to become a librarian. Currently, she works as a Reference Librarian in the Alachua county Library District. She has been writing poems and short stories since high school. However, after publishing a few poems during college, she wandered away from writing. Recently, after enrolling in Southern New Hampshire’s on-line creative writing program, she is in the process of completing a MA degree in poetry and putting together a chapbook for publication.