Overlook

“If it had been a snake it
would have bit you,” he said,
referring to the jar of coffee
on the kitchen table, I
thrice circled in a lust for caffeine.
What else lies before me unseen?
The eyeglasses, I thought I lost, perched upon my nose,
the phone in my pocket,
the car fob atop the piano,
overlooked amid panic of departure,
the sun and moon earring cornered
in my mother’s red lacquered box (opened a dozen times)
the paperback novel wedged behind
the mattress where I drift away nights
from searches unrealized.

I have long circled for the quiet heart,
the self-assured life,
the ease I felt in your presence
the autumn we were nineteen,
my happiness too real to endure,
willfully overlooked,
a snake I feared
might bite.