My glasses tip toe on my nose as I
tuck myself behind New Yorker
magazines and ungraded papers.
What is this cat and mouse?
I ponder the space in the middle, a canyon
of cowardice and closet doors -
doors already opened but cracking.
I am here, and he is there.
Wednesday night coffee - a ritual of
deaf mute gestures, optimism, and
a quiet, loud waiting.
He is a terrible whisperer.
We see each other, no?
Stoic patience awaits a wink -
for him to ask what I am writing.
"Funny you should ask," I would say.
Our eyes peep and meet through closet
door hinges - peering down
a long hallway of speculation.
Can he glimpse the brown of my eye?
This poem is a crinkled up note tossed
tumbling down the hall - a white flag
kind of note. An impatient surrender.
Where did my guts go, and my glittered spine?
But Ignorance is warm, and Hope can live
there - hunkered down in a bastion of
postponement and timidity - surviving,
on the freeze-dried butterflies of my stomach.
Flip the clasp of your inhibition and cast
open the chest of your heartbeat -
embrace the canyon and leap.
Hello, mouse.
