When I Didn’t Go to Prom

They came to the side window:
the bears,
but really it was my best friend
in her prom dress, knocking
on the window,
senior year
when we didn’t go together,

even though it would
have been a good time,
walking through the public museum,
leaning against each other.
The houses of old Milwaukee
beckoning us
to look through their windows.

In her bedroom there was no side
window, but I would still have dreamed
those bears. Maybe they came
from the Ukrainian folk tale.
Maybe they came
from the bed that was too small
for us both.

*

Olena Jennings is the author of the poetry collection The Age of Secrets (Lost Horse Press,) the forthcoming poetry collection The Memory of Maps (Lost Horse Press,) and the chapbook Memory Project. She is the translator or co-translator of collections by Ukrainian poets Iryna Shuvalova, Kateryna Kalytko, Vasyl Makhno, Yuliya Musakovska, and Anna Malihon. She lives in Queens, New York where she founded and collaboratively runs the Poets of Queens reading series and press.