We are tripping over syllables that should not be spoken, cigarette smoke and coffee grounds empty on the sidewalk and remembering the emphasis on her syllables. The resonance of space between words and the way she lingers with me, questing for moments lost as though stillness is a price we pay for too much laughter nights and midnights previous. She offers me a cigarette and I feel the weight thrown, my old life for a song – like nothing has changed and she will revive me, recreate me, mold me into the image of who she has intensified and glorified in her mind. But I am no longer the child she knew and there is something slippery here, I taste it in the stillness. Something acrid. Something not worthy of the person I want to be. I shake my head. I do not want this here. It is already the mess it was and nothing has happened.
First this, then harmless phone calls, then the solidity of steel and she is blackmail, the egocentric grip against my soul
And I will not have it marking me again
Denial moving me,
And I am rising, thinking of the space between beats, the stillness of a night too far from me,
Too close to not recall
Call it last
And he lying still in sleep, his eyes with laughter, heart a piece of mind tucked deep inside
And I am shaking at how close she came to thinking of stealing a piece of that
And I am shaking at how close she came to wanting to even come near to a piece of me . . . of this life we have and lead together
And I wonder
What possessed me to say yes
To this
Sitting in this booth,
This innocent sitting and talking
This invocation of friendship
And knowledge that I have friends, this knowledge that I do not need this in me
And I turn and move away
And in the silence of my car I sit and wait, pick up the phone
Voice mail
His voice in the silent darkness but therein the relief . . .
He and I
And no other

Turn the key and press the car into gear . . . go home
Where he waits just for me
As I have been waiting just for him

Sometimes i don't even have to go . . . the truth is there if i seek
. . . . . i just have to seek