I dropped a bracelet in New York somewhere

On a chaotic street 

I looked to my wrist 

hoping for the glimmer 

of the metallic tickle of love 

but it was not there. 

Here’s what I think happened: 

A thought of you came to me 

and came again 

as it often does 

swelling my skin as if too long in a bath. 

And the clasp - 

unable to contain the elation 

because it is just metal of this earth 

drawn to a gravity which my thoughts defy 

- broke.  

It must have fallen somewhere between 23rd Street 

where Broadway crosses over 5th 

and births Madison,  

before the Avenue must carry on into the bedlam 

of Herald Square. 

Passion-stricken 

the little gift 

plummeted in an ecstatic haze 

and emitted a single, contented, heart-shaped moan 

which expanded itself between the frenetic objects of a city, 

siphoning all esprit in a nuclear wave 

before it ascended to a higher stratosphere  

and began a sonorous throb 

which I like to think lasted  

as a sublime glow 

long after  

the frenzy 

of you and me. 

---

Eleanor Keisman

Eleanor Keisman is an American expatriate based in Vienna, Austria, working in the communications department of an international educational NGO. Her essays, short stories, and poems have appeared in Litro Magazine, The Bangalore Review, Tough Crime, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, as well as adapted for a podcast "The Other Stories". She has an MFA in creative writing and co-organizes an English-language writing club in Vienna. In her free time, she enjoys hiking in the Vienna Woods, cooking, and reading. She has just finished her first novel.