Post-War Aubade, BY AMANDA AUCHTER

                                                  2011

I look for you in this boulevard
of so much destruction — shreds
 
of newspapers, burned tires. It is May
and I cannot find you here among
 
the broken windows and petals
dropped to gravel. Were you ever
 
here — your face in the shuttered
tobacco shops, of plumeria scarving
 
the street, a handkerchief embroidered
with sorrow? Was there ever a night
 
we did not miss the other, did not hold
our faces to the moon and listen
 
to the mortar shells bombing this city
where we had our last glass of wine,
 
where you plucked gardenia from
the bush at our favorite cafe
 
and you kissed me between cars? Where
you watched me sit on the hotel bed,
 
pull thread from my sewing kit, stitch
your name into my skin. I stood naked
 
at the window and watched our city
burn. For weeks I climbed into bed
 
beside you. I heard the sirens,
but not once did I ever take cover.

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Amanda Auchter is the author of The Wishing Tomb, winner of the 2013 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Poetry and the 2012 Perugia Press Book Award, and The Glass Crib, winner of the 2010 Zone 3 Press First Book Award for Poetry. Auchter's recent work appears in The Huffington Post and CNN. She lives in Houston, TX.