Mist in the morning air
collects heavy on the neck
of a blade of grass

Thumbing through yellowed
crumbling pages of schoolbooks
meeting ghosts in the margins

coffee spitting.
clicking.
fingertips stumbling ever so awkwardly
across the keyboard.
slightly stale leftover love.
making memories
drift in from the other  room.
secondhand bassline
like an artificial pulse.
incomprehensible morning chatter
rising from the carpet
tickling the bare feet.
neutral silence
running noticeably
underneath it all.
like an omen
or a prayer.
a lost soul’s secret. desire
untold, and thus forgotten

or maybe just silence.
and nothing more

Silver-bearded ex-hippie
endless pony-tail
fedora and wise eyes.
I wonder if he writes
like Ginsberg -
or at all.
I decide that he should.
He has stories to tell, this man.
He looks like a professor I had one semester
a lifetime ago.

She lied to the nice man
told him
I'm fine
and kept walking
he was swallowed seconds later by her insecurities
never to be seen again.

Sitting a corner booth by herself,
sipping on a Long Island Iced Tea
and reading Keats.
Hands down, she's the most
captivating person in this bar.

Fingertips calloused, and hands nicked and scraped
like she'd been in a fight with experience
and went down swinging.
Eased into her seat like slipping naked into a hot bath.
Smiled with all her teeth
like no one was looking.

Left her phone at home,
in pieces on the kitchen floor.
Tonight was the night she was going to forget all about the custody battle
the bill collectors
the late night fights about who was right
and who was left in the room with all this shattered glass to clean  up
the long sobbing nights with her pillow and her secret shame
the regret for time poorly spent looking for love in bars and cold blue eyes
the years that separated her from twenty-two –  when she was young and delusionally happy.

With her body language, she unknowingly spoke to me:
Tonight, I came to drink and dance.
Don't bother me with pick up lines.
Pick up artists, go find another canvas.
Mine's been painted over plenty.
I don't have the time to save anymore white knights from their mother's ***.
That fairytale story always ends in Shakespearean tragedy.
Plus, the **** horse leaves scuff marks on the dance floor.

I take one last sip
and slip the bartender an extra twenty-
tonight the nightingale drinks for free.

I leave before she can thank me.

The sensitive arch of her soul
tickles with longing
for reunion with fresh cut Spring grass

The dark and humid trappings of unnatural comfort,
man-made warmth for a bitter season,
makes her free-sprinting spirit claustrophobic

And although she can see the gleaming snow for miles
and can appreciate the appeal of a nice blanket
She hates shoes,
how heavy they can become on long walks -
a soggy burden in the name of convenience

She sees the grass peaking out form under it's Winter covers
and her Nike wings twitch with anticipation
for a sweet chance to shed superfluous layers

Until then
She blues dances in the dark
looking for a faint spark
and in her dreams, she runs
through wild fires