Waiting in San Francisco by Carla Sarett

Oh, I never recall the bumpy flights, or the rude passengers.
Only the waiting in freezing airport lounges, those endless waits.
Everyone dying to get home.
The soiled napkins, the cold pizza, the road warriors flaunting their billable hours  and stabbing their enemy laptops, defeated by thunder and lightning and things unknown.
Women shouting into their phones, I don’t know when, darling, I just don’t know.


The longest day was from Charleston, I landed at midnight after a storm
 I waited for you at baggage claim, until there wasn’t any luggage.
Your cell was dead, or you left it behind, you got lost somewhere between Terminal A and Terminal B.
You’re impossible, I said
Possibly, you said.
Definitely, I said.
Perhaps, you said.
We were impossible.


But then, we’d meet by accident in the Whole Foods parking lot.
We were like teens on a first date, weren’t we?
We sailed into the store, rolling our cart, throwing in blood oranges and fresh figs, rainbow chard and dandelions, and spicy sardines from Portugal, insanely overpriced.
All of it, such a luxury, so much more than we ever anticipated.
I guess we could have planned better and organized a single trip, 
But then, we would have missed our romance in the parking lot, what a surprise it was,
And what sweet sorrow it was to go home in separate cars.


I’m in a laundromat, the type that stays open all day and all night,
And isn’t very clean to start with.
Even in my dreams, I can’t be glamorous like Virginia Woolf, 
I’m not walking to the lighthouse, I’m not walking into water.
No tea parties for me.
No, I’m separating light from dark, like generations of women before me,
And waiting for another cycle to begin.  

About the Poet:

Carla Sarett‘s short fiction and essays have been published in literary magazines including Defenestration, Black Rabbit Quarterly, Loch Raven Review, Blue Lyra Review, Hobart, Across the Margins and others. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best American Essay.  Her debut novel A Closet Feminist is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. Carla has a Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania, and currently lives in San Francisco.