Spring Break
Catherine Esposito Prescott
I love how you walked
in front of my car this morning
wearing pink hot pants and a gold
bikini bra carrying a plastic red cup
of sugary alcoholic goodness
which, no doubt, was your breakfast.
And I know I’m much older
than you not because I don’t
wear bikini bras and hot pants,
but because before I almost hit
you all I could think about
was your mother, and how she
would die—literally, as you’d say—
to see you this way at 9:00 AM
or at any time, which is why I stopped
my car suddenly to let you cross
Collins Avenue, and walk in tact
into your postcard, into your sweet
oblivion, the one with sand hiding
your painted toes and a thousand
foreign eyes telling you everything
you think you need to hear.
Catherine Esposito Prescott is the author of two chapbooks: Maria Sings and The Living Ruin. Recent poems have appeared in Flyway, MiPOesias, Pleiades, Poetry East, Southern Poetry Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, and TAB. Prescott is co-founder of SWWIM, which curates a reading series and publishes SWWIM Every Day.