Clearing out thirty-two years
of stuff I found the paper
yellowing in the nightstand drawer.

Carefully typed depressions
where the keys struck skin,
laying out my credentials,

hoping to appeal, it failed
to win the job
but brought me you.

And now two kids,
thirty-two years gone by, I remember
how we sat, side by side,

waiting for U2 to come onstage:
you under a rough blanket
with laryngitis, whispering
possibility, me sandwiched

between you
and the hanging thread
of another failed relationship.

What came next a mix
of projection and hope,
then the wearing thin of it.

Now we’ve stalled too long,
found our engines once again,
formulate a new wish.

The resumé stays in the drawer,
folded like lost futures,
food for silverfish.

Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, educator, photographer, and recent publisher whose first release, Unsheathed: 24 Contemporary Poets Take Up the Knife, came out in October 2019. Her work has been in The Blue Nib, The Ekphrastic Review, Poetry Super Highway, and Rattle (photography), to name a few. Her first chapbook, Alinea (Picture Show Press), came out in January 2019.