She Thinks She Is Safe Poem by Richard G Berg

She thinks she is safe
Her smart clothes, from late teens
Age uncreased. Her concentration of lip-stick
Applied before the compact mirror's good eye

Safe in an expensive restaurant, lying
In another hotel's lap, money-hungry
A port-hole window, in the kitchen's door, thick
With manufactured mist. Behind it
Corners are cut and cuts too deep to corner
Sear the staff, too busy to notice
Or to mind

She thinks she is safe
In this man's dinner-dressed closeness
His strangeness thawing
Under her nostalgic stare
Sharing the table, their homeland
Easy familiarity of language
Safe nods, quick smiles, tremouring laughs
Seismic desires kept off-menu

She thinks she is safe
Cutting short the evening, editing
His walk-wishes into a spurt
For the tube. Safely below
Ground, finding his umbrella in her arms
She lets it go, nearer the new home
Its colours, and intentions, not her flag

She thinks she is safe
Travelling through charity bookshops, looking
To purchase thrift
From remembered shops. Scanning shelves
For poets to populate her room
The names new, themes not. Clutched, like flowers
On the way back. Planted in a soil
She will not water

She thinks she is safe
Sweetening her steps with ice-creams, licking off the days
With sorbets, their cones left
For someone else. Enjoying the choices
Letting others melt

She thinks she is safe
Winding back the watch
She will not wear of childhood
To herons, muskrats, wild grasses, sun-trapped lakes
Images her parents send, occupying her phone's mind

She thinks she is safe
Posting her blurred photos of London
Without herself in, laughing
With friends at what her words rain
Getting safely sloshed in the eaves
Of her nights when the phone dies

She thinks she is safe

Richard G Berg
May 2022