by Anna Pele

Silver bullet glides near
silent into the station. Each car’s

red door beeps open, and people,
eighty thousand daily, flood

the 111-year-old building. Once, a life-
time ago, I was one of them,

when a man, tall as a king-
size bed penetrated my chest.

I stay seated, no one to tell I’m almost home.

I resemble a post-war reconstruction:
blunt lines, bare-bones, cracked mosaic

a façade filled with debris.
Before that time in life, I was ornate

decorations with narrow windows, a Wilhelmian
building that wouldn’t survive another war.

I presumed my heart safe on the wrought
iron balcony, yet he reached it easily, sweet

talked me up to the fifth floor of his reformist
house: all clear lines, functional design.

His heart encasing mine, we huddled through winters,
listened to birds proclaim equinox after equinox, the subway’s

squeak in this curve on summer night breezes.
Until his casing, solar eyes and all, collapsed to ash.

Past our curve, silver bullet accelerates.

Image by Tina Miroshnichenko via Pexels