she played cello… that was years ago…now the wood and strings stand in a corner…a decorative piece…

was once a socialist…an idealist…weekends spent at the Revolutionary Bookstore…Marx and Lenin were read…The Communist Manifesto lay on a white doily by her Queen size bed…

dinners at Indian restaurants and hookahs smoked at midnight while poetry sang out…bouncing off bar-room walls in Wicker Park…now that has changed too…

I was a passing fancy….a twelve year escape…from parent’s orders…from the obscenities that make us less pure…there was no American dream…

goodbye Wicker Park…goodbye Greenwhich Village…goodbye poetry and music…

she played cello… that was years ago….