by Moira Walsh

7 a.m. on Hallowmas.
Alone in the hotel restaurant
I feel like a winner.

That’s one life skill I’ve learned:
eating alone, slowly,
without a phone, enjoying it.

I converse through the pane
with a flowering vine
in rain-against-petal, leaf-against-wind.

Chewing weird bread contentedly,
I start when a well-shod somebody
leans in close to me,

asking something.

Moira Walsh is the author of Earthrise (Penteract Press, 2023) and, with Wilfried Schubert, Do Try This at Home (Femme Salvé Books, 2024). You can find her on Instagram @poetbynecessity and at her desk in southern Germany, where she writes and translates for a living.