Poem by

Millicent Borges Accardi

I Ask you not to Leave Tomorrow

In my own sort of pulling

needy way that I have when

I try to sort

myself out of a bad place

I ask again in

my fictional conversation,

interrupting the words

upon the page of

the one I walked in on

in the middle of a book,

when I feel the pull of tears

at the back of my throat

as if I am going to strangle

myself,

I am static and stable,

a woman aboard a slow

boat to China, the song

my dead

parents danced to at

their wedding at the

Seafarer’s chapel

when they were young

and on break, from jobs

at the new Sears

on Acushnet Ave

already on their way

home for malasadas

moving rapidly

to a wad of 50 years

of a marriage

lived cross-country

mentally, inside a story

only I know now,

during the far away past time

of what was never meant

to be.

I fear the new promised hint

of a place now tugging

where everyone

succeeds in their weeping,

and I look for signs that

this is true.