Ladies’ Night Out

by Lynne Burnett                                                               

I sit down, unaware cancer has circled

our table again, tapped someone else. Chemo

snatched Brandy’s hair and now it’s regrown:

a storm-tossed sea where sweet vanities drown.

She and I are the same age, a wicked flicker

of the candle on the table between us with

every opening and closing of the pub door.

Our group clinks glasses, her old self trickling

back from its hard bench: the white-knuckled

wait for a sick impostor to get up and go.

Twenty years we’ve leaned on each other,

a six-pack. Our kids have just graduated,

man-boys sure they can shoulder what’s next.

We talk about letting them go, pride sweating

it out with the resident ache of emptying rooms,

as we also are let go. We mean by them—

a mutual milestone. Later, I’ll remember

our voices low in the dark—the hum

of an ancient river coursing seaward—

how gently it rocks a boat with no oars.