A Coward’s love by Alison Hurst

This poem was first published in Emerging Possibilities Ezine on 1st December 2025.

A Coward’s love

I see your back is to me, stooping down investigating a box of books,

I am in some kind of dumb torpor.

I am a coward,

That is perfectly obvious to me now.

Frozen, with a jumble of “I’m sorry’”, “It’s awful”, “are you okay?”, in my head.

And then I run,

Run like the cockroach I am,

Scurrying behind the shop’s cabinet,

As if to protect myself from your grief.

Your son’s face shimmers around your crouched body,

Each detail lucid to my view.

The light fur of Joe’s pubescent moustache,

It had arrived the year of the accident.

Now it brings up memories of past love.

I stare blankly through the jewelry display, frozen.

Hopeless.

Narration booms at me in my sacred vestibule.

“What’s wrong with me! Just go over and say hello,

It’s simple”.

Demanding, intimidating.

“I was her friend once”, my guilt murmurs.

“She might need you”, a wiser me pleads.

You were there, always there.

Like that night I found out about Greg’s affair.

You let me rage for hours,

Poured glass after glass of wine until I fell in you lap,

My snot drenching your skirt.

My friend.

A rising of words that were locked away in my gut percolate to my mouth

And I want to vomit.

It’s too late, months have passed and I never visited.

A coward I am.

You stand before my wretchedness, book in hand.

We both hold the moment,

As if, once dropped our whole existence will shatter.

“I’m sorry” pushes against my teeth.

Instead, I robotically say,

“That’s $15 dollars please”.

A scream rings through my consciousness, so intense I think I’ll faint.

A friend I used to be.

I’d come by when Greg was away,

Clear Joe’s animal toys as you bathed him.

We’d sit on your couch, plotting our outfits to our husband’s work dos,

Whilst your little boy slept nestled between us.

I am a coward’s ghost before a light of hope.

A warmth upon my shoulder and I feel him,

Joe, his hand is removing the chains that locked me away from you.

His joyful spirit softens my frozen heart.

Mascara streaks are creating the prison door I peek out from.

“I’m so sorry, Joan”, slips out from my hovel.

You,

You,

A courageous soul who reaches out to my shaking hand,

“I know you loved him too”, a soft smile before me.

Your grief hardened brown eyes birthing peaceful kindness to me,

The cowardly fool that I am