Hour 7: When you’re a poet, and you ex is a regular at your bar.

 

I sat at the end of the bar. Ink flowed

smooth like good sex and top shelf,

bleeding on wet squares of paper.

How many passed between drinks? Swapped out

blank slates, rounds came

and went.

 

Around me the ebb and flow gurgled

a white noise mountain stream, dry

seasons and flash floods.

Time was lost, written between the lines,

and the only other seat that was never empty

was the one next to mine.

 

Without looking, I felt your feigned indifference

weighing heavy on my pen, as if the words would speak to you

the wisdom to unlock the space

between us.

My nod to the bartender puts a drink in your hand,

your surprise lays my pen down, drowning in a pool of condensation.

 

We were not always strangers in this place.

 

Even as your yearning threatens to suffocate me,

I yield,

on my own terms.

 

Dance with me.

 

Dizzy, a hair’s breadth of infinite darkness between

us; lightness, your hands cup

my hips, knotted fingers

in the void, no one can see

two left feet.