RECKONING 

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Once, in the park with 

the chessboard tables, I saw

a blue chalk arrow, the words 

HAPPINESS THIS WAY. 

No one around me paid heed

to these directions. I saw myself

in the face of each passerby. 

I saw myself everywhere 

but in me. This was the summer 

whose storms tore down trees, 

the summer that bruised into a winter

when I spent day after day scribbling

notes on the frosted windows of taxicabs, 

begging for a reckoning. 

In the emptied-out December, 

the philodendron leaves caught shock 

and drifted toward the mopped floor.

A desire whose origin I couldn’t recall

broke off like a stingray’s tail inside me. 

For a while, I held the knowledge  

of its presence at arm’s length. 

If I acknowledged this feeling, 

would that give it strength? 

If I named it, would I transform 

what might have been benign

into something malignant? 

I guess we all reach this point eventually. 

When it comes, you must rise 

from your park bench. Ignore 

the reflections of sky in the glass buildings—

they’re only meant to fool you. 

Underfoot you’ll find a blue arrow. 

Follow it as far as you can, 

until there’s nowhere else to go. 

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BIO:

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​Lauren Aliza Green is the author of the novel The World After Alice (Viking, 2024) and the chapbook A Great Dark House, selected by Joshua Bennett as the winner of the Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. Her work has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Threepenny Review, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere. 

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