appears among some clothes you are sorting
and the recipe you’d forgotten falls from
the pages of the cookbook you’re perusing
and the person who convinced herself
she must hate you for your differences
appears in a dream as a character to protect.
And the friendship once abandoned
is resumed, though only in spectral form,
in a familiar world you’ve never seen,
where garments are only imagined
to fit, and flavors are tasted
simply by reading ingredient lists,
but promises to cook it again
are never kept because it didn’t
taste that good in the first place.
Nancy Whitecar is a professional pianist and music teacher living in the Bay Area, California, who is making publication of her writing her third act. Her poetry has been published in “Stick Figure,” “Loud Coffee Press,” and “A&U Magazine,” which nominated her poem “Punch Line” for a Pushcart Prize. Her short stories have appeared in “The MacGuffin” and “Ember: A Journal of Luminous Things.” She’s listening to jazz or Beethoven at home when she’s not hiking and camping with her husband.
