Sunday Poem – Untitled

It’s late and cold when you arrive at the bar

I read morose verses into the way you hold your shoulders

dancing limericks in your shaking hands.  You’re drinking

tap water because it’s free and studying for hours because

this hungry, twilight academic life is the 

opposite of free.

You will talk to me but your eyes are on an unseen page

if you could fight your way through the clotted vowels

the ruthless complications.  The assertions that you must know this.

If you could only know it.  If you could only know it.  If you could only know enough –

sorry, what were you saying?  You said something.  What was it?

No, it’s okay.

Your shoulders slump a little and you draw a static heartbeat

in the spilled water on the table.  All of a sudden I’m sorry

and I want to put my mouth against your cheek.  And I want to say something.

It’s all that’s in me.  I watch you release all of your breath like it hurts you.

And what I want to say is I love you I love you I love you I love you I love 

Listen, I’m going to buy a bowl of chips

and pretend I’m not hungry enough to finish them by myself.  

Daisy Harris