Leaving
We invent our own ways of leaving.
It is morning in Manila,
we begin to dress, survey
our bodies as friends can.
Our lives are revealed in scars we have acquired.
The accident slashed across the side of your forehead is fading, can be covered by a light foundation.
Stretched under the flap of my stomach
is a red seam, barely a year old,
We confirm what is left of our beauty
after the years have marked us
with sons and skids down icy roads.
A short distance away my husband reads a child's fable to my son.
Across an ocean there is a man
you contemplate a beginning with.
We invent our own ways to say goodbye.
I lean toward tears.
You hold them back with a sturdy voice
coming from the other room where you apply something red to your lips.
You emerge dressed for L.A.
and tell me:
Life is a constant choice between the
wonderful and the wonderful.
I force a smile.
the kiss you imprint on my cheek
is red—a fresh scar.
Laurie Kuntz’s books are: That Infinite Roar (Gyroscope Press), Talking Me Off The Roof (Kelsay Books), The Moon Over My Mother’s House (Finishing Line Press), Simple Gestures (Texas Review Press), Women at the Onsen (Blue Light Press), and Somewhere in the Telling (Mellen Press). Simple Gestures won Texas Review’s Chapbook Contest, and Women at the Onsen won Blue Light Press’s Chapbook Contest. She’s been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and two Best of the Net Prizes. In 2024, she won a Pushcart Prize. Her newest manuscript Shelter In Place was a finalist in the Louis Prize from Concrete Wolf Publishers. Her work has been published in Gyroscope Review, Roanoke Review, Third Wednesday, One Art, Sheila Na Gig, SWWIM, and other journals and anthologies. Happily retired, she lives in an endless summer state of mind. More at: https://lauriekuntz.myportfolio.com/home-1