I flick away the centuries
Tuesday, December 28, 1999
He laughed, and peeled the sides of his Pop-Tart
into brown seams. Currency filled the room:
toilet paper, orange juice. Plastic crates
filled with next week’s copies of magazines.
In the morning we boarded the windows,
smeared the doorposts, anticipated scourge.
He still wondered if I could be trusted,
eyed my calves for contractions. For moments,
throughout the night, I wanted to run away,
to place my lips on the Liberty Bell
with the rest of the throng, accept the year,
the swallow of cold breath, but, even so:
we anointed our heads in our nightclothes,
the pillow, the approach of the morning.
Hannah Sassaman
The author is a junior at the University of Pennsylvania and a poetry editor at CrossConnect Magazine. Her poem, provided courtesy of Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania, is one of a series on the Commentary Page celebrating the turn of the year/the century/the millennium/everything.