The taxi drivers gin-blossomed nose
and odor of elderberry
make us wonder if Santa has a day job.

December mists swirl, the station
a ghost town in fog
that promises to unveil a sparkling
December morning.

We kiss before separating for work
and he holds a moment longer
as though the gesture is a benediction
he wants to trap before it escapes.

He runs for the commuter train
and I walk to my office
spend overly long day
blindly beetling in glass cube
hoping someone will notice
and release me into cold crisp air.

Catch a train; wait in crystal sharp
sunlight to see him
come through the station doors
eagerly awaited present, arrived.

Michelle Hartman’s work was featured in the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and appears in Slipstream, Plainsongs, Carve, Crannog, Poetry Quarterly, The Pedestal Magazine, Raleigh Review, San Pedro River Review, Concho River Review and RiverSedge as well as over sixty other journals and thirty anthologies. Her work appears in multiple countries overseas. Her books, Disenchanted and Disgruntled, and Irony and Irreverence from Lamar University Press, are available from Amazon. Her new book, The Lost Journal of My Second Trip to Purgatory, will be released from Lamar University Press in Spring, 2016. She is the editor for the online journal, Red River Review and holds a BS in Political Science-Pre Law from Texas Wesleyan University.