Kay Cosgrove 's work has appeared in Chickenpinata, SP Quill Quarterly, and Abbeywood Anthologies. In the fall she will begin her M.F.A. at Sarah Lawrence College. She lives and works in New York City.  

After High Windows

     by Kay Cosgrove

When we hold hands on the bus

or across the table of the diner on my block,

I guess the waitress and the bald guy

wonder when we started

sleeping together, or if that has happened

yet, or if we're going to go do it, or just

stopped.  Perfection. We are perfection

on the bus, in the diner, what the priest

wakes up sweating for in the night. At mass

my Mother hugs you, wondering if we've

committed iniquity, half-wishing, half-not caring,

like when the bird crashed into her windshield,

like when the priest hung himself in his room—

a bloody, feathered emptiness.

Blue light poured down from the windows

on nothing, nowhere, endlessly.

© 2009 Kay Cosgrove