AFTER THE PERFORMANCE.
for Lauren Flanigan

The stage was a vast seashell
where music like water left
a taste of salt, a fairyland
alive with malicious laughter,
and she its source–
limpid beauty with a demon's tongue,
a mermaid who swam in from the sea.

Silver hair freed, soaked
and plastered to her head,
her shining face scrubbed of make-up,
in black sweats she goes out
to walk her dog that patiently
waited all this time.