From WTP Vol. V #3

Sisyphus Takes a Cruise
By Tracy May Adair

Not just any cruise: to a colder place,
that respite might encourage me for another eternity.

Alaska, albeit summer and unseasonably warm,
as if I’d brought my own hell with me.

Expectations unmet, yet exceeded.  Turned inside out.
Hands grasping at glamour, gilded railings, mirrored

elevator doors. Stewards’ eyes flicker
while they fake friendliness on this foreign ship.

Scent of strawberry champagne. Napkins folded
into perfect swans, art auctions, teeth whitening sessions.

Almond oil massage. Tanzanite jewelry in every port.
Continually refueled by a tender of hopes unfulfilled

while the tiny hot tubs of studio-lot happiness
remained filled to capacity.  With waiting lines.

Bordering now on the edge of nowhere, a glacier
falling into a bay, a fjord. A deep water port that won’t ice.

All this joy they must—after all, look at them—be experiencing,
yet in my pocket, the black hole I carry, my stone.