Reunion

Sara Rempe

Tonight the wind is so sudden 
it rattles us even inside   

this quiet restaurant. It’s been years 
since we’ve sat together.  

You lift your glass to toast us: 
a glistening fist in the air  

and lean back in your chair—satisfied 
before we’ve even begun.  I watch you  

raise your knife, stab a slab of flesh 
and rest the red meat on your tongue.  

I think of us as children: Christmas mornings  
you woke me before dawn   

and led me to that sacred place: 
pristine gifts waiting.   

You pulled out your tiny knife 
and focused—slicing precisely  

into the bright paper 
pulling open to see  

underneath—what we were sure 
to receive but stole instead.  

You moved me through 
the cold dark not wanting 

to be found. Strange no one ever 
heard—no one guessed where we were:  

sprawled among the spoiled gifts,  
Christmas lights blinking  

in the icy air; the good  
lord looking down  

on some other house. 

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Sara Rempe is a writer and educator in New York. She earned her BA in creative writing and her MFA in poetry at Hunter College where she received a teaching fellowship, a Norma Lubetsky Friedman Scholarship, and currently teaches creative writing in the English department. She was selected as Thinker in Residence by Art in Odd Places in 2016 and her work appears in publications including The Cape Rock, Snapdragon Journal, AiOP and Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine. Her feature film,The Last Day of August, can be found on AmazonPrime.