ANDREA COHEN

the sorrow apartments

Who would name a place
that and why am I
standing in front of them?
A man in a gray
face and matching
jacket asks: Are you
Andrea? And I am 
surprised and say, I am.
He reaches into his pocket. I
have keys for you, he says,
gesturing at the brutalist
structure, and I’m confused,
having only gone out
for a short walk and by
chance found myself
here. Oh no, I tell him, you
want some other Andrea––
one an x-ray glimpsed
a troubling shadow in,
one whose parachute was
too casually packed. That’s
the Andrea you’re after, I say,
but he seems unconvinced.
Andrea Cohen? he asks.
Yes, I admit, but there
are so many of us: a rabbi
and a rabbi’s wife, a porn
star, a murderer. We’re  
a dime a dozen, I tell him.
He nods and sighs, he sits
down on a tired bench. I’m
tired too. I sit beside him.
Do you have kids? he asks.
No, I say. Me neither, he replies.
Do you want to see them?
He opens his wallet. They’re
with my ex, he says, producing
snapshots of a girl and boy
whose faces have been
erased by how many times
his thumb has touched them.
The children are standing
in front of a fountain.  It’s
dusk in the pictures and
in the world and we compare
wishing wells we wish we could
get back to. He can’t remember
when he began his life as the door-
man and Mr. Fixit at The Sorrow
Apartments. I can’t remember
when I first learned that people
who are lost tend to wander
in ever-tightening circles.
It’s one of those nights
of talking into the dark
until the sun
interrupts you. By
then, I notice that the sign
for The Sorrow Apartments
is gone, replaced by one
that reads: The Wonder Estates,
Under New Management.
That’s strange, I say.
Not really, he says, there
are so many signs, they’re
always changing: Happy
Acre, Wistful Cottages,
Paradise Place. In another
life, I might have said
that he and I had met
in another life. I take
the keys. Sorrow
is complicated.

Andrea Cohen’s eighth poetry collection, The Sorrow Apartments, is forthcoming from Four Way Books. She directs the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, MA.