Not with you

not with you

one day I went to the pub without you,
with a different man, in fact,

with a friend.

the waitress knew me 
and she looked at me hard 
when she seated us.

sometimes you see a look
on someone’s face 

and there 
is a recognition,

you know exactly what they mean,
or so you think.

but you can never quite be sure 
if what you recognized
was something they said,

or only a mirror
or both.

limbic resonance, it’s called:
when you fall into a feeling together.

***

what I saw in her face 
was relief.

she was relieved 
because I 
was not with you.

— Amy Isikoff Newell, December 2022