Apartment 6B
by Deborah Hauser

I ride an unfamiliar subway line downtown
clutching a bakery box
by the tense red and white string
rehearsing how to greet her.

6B. I press the bell firmly.
She buzzes sharply in reply.
At the end of the dark hallway
the door has been left ajar.

I enter the narrow room
where she lives now.
Efficient, I think, but cheerless.
Until, I see the small terra cotta pot
perched on the window ledge
bearing a single yellow blossom.

Deborah Hauser lives on Long Island. She is the author of Ennui: From the Diagnostic and Statistical Field Guide of Feminine Disorders (Finishing Line Press, 2011). She received an MA in English Literature from Stony Brook University. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in dogwood, DASH, The Wallace Stevens Journal, The Pedestal Magazine, and -gape-seed- (Uphook Press). deborahhauser.com