Seaview is an accurate name for this hotel
if you angle your body, stretch to look past
golfers, and call the bay a sea. President Harding
bet on each hole on this course. That last
hole goes home, they say, takes you back
to the hotel bar. Grace Kelly danced
with her father at her sweet sixteen ball
in the Oval Room. In a cold office my doctor
lifted his phone to photograph my breast.
Something wrong, something I should
have seen myself. Next, testing, surgery,
phoned reports. It’s been proved—what you
love best in a loved face is the anomaly,
nose a bit tilted, mouth too generous, one
eye slightly higher, eyebrow bending
asymmetrically. I wish for each woman health
for her favorite feature (nose, legs, pouting
mouth. Or mind, compassion, ambition).
Out in the night a fishhook arcs up
toward the farthest cloud. To each of you
in this hotel tonight I wish birthday candles
dripping wax. I have something beautiful
for you, or you have it in you or beside
you or it’s out the window in the trundling waves.
Photo by Anita Jankovic on Unsplash
