4
The diversity of absence extends the time of waiting
As wielding roads lead you nowhere near my whispers.
You’re lost in traffic of both city and craving.
It’s late but probably not for two more vignettes:
A hand-smashed monobloc chair and your crystalline eyes.
I suspect that by the time you have come
To a nearby street bend, for me to fetch you,
For you to explain your lateness and stillness,
The songs we could have sung together
Are dead ending in a screen’s corner.
The videoke radiant in judgment could undermine us;
62, more practice, it would openly say.
Perhaps not because we poorly sang.
But because you were late and still.
And because my hand shrieked of cuts
From breaking a monobloc chair
Because you were late and still.
The only way to settle then is to gulp red wine with ice,
Laugh with our friends as we feast on chicken meat,
Forgetting your lateness, your stillness, my hand.
Or maybe to conflagrate in a cuddle
In aurorean lifelessness amid the merriment’s leftovers
—Bloated bodies suffering from the weight of deep slumber,
Unwashed plates and glasses shamefully silent in the sink,
The anarchic balance of the living room, the smell of beer,
The damp atmosphere, and other sharp scatterings
Across the floor—forgetting the dissonance of our breathing.
