Published on: 11/24/2014
The Sadness in her Eyes

At the doctor's Office
a girl sits with a colorful sundress,
wound about her legs.
I wonder if she's Jewish
as I note the Hamsa that hangs
from a chain around her neck
and dangles at a sundial scar on her chest.
She speaks French Canadian to her partner
and I guess she also speaks English,
because our gynecologist does.

She's upset and won't or can't make out
the forms the nurse gave her,
and hands them to the man.
Where is her lovely smile,
her lilting laugh?
Hidden now—veiled behind
a guise of gray
eyes looking through the window
at a cascading summer rain.

And of a sudden, I know.
Remembering that same
sadness in her eyes, that gaze
looking back at me from the mirror
when I was about her age.
She, too, has lost the baby.