If someday you

break a glass

Remember —

        you

once broke a heart

One of my classes has theater seating with little desks that two people share. I’m sitting by this huge man, who really should have a little desk all to himself. I don’t want to seem ungenerous but he just sprawls out like I’m not there.

So in a profoundly machismo gesture, this morning, I marked my territory with a pencil. It was carnal, feral, aggressive, and distinctly unfeminine gesture - more than a mere assertion of "First come, first serve" etiquette.

I’m familiar with life’s overlapping territories, like sidewalks, movie armrests and overhead bins and the subtle, shared space social negotiations when someone, say, introduces a laptop to a crowded library table and we all must  shuffle our stuff around or when someone desperately needs the only charger.

THEN, Friday morning big-guy starts this SUPER awkward conversation. To be clear - up until then - our ‘relationship’ had been blessedly non-verbal.

Let me tell it poetically..

He said he saw me signing in and timed it so I sat by him
he hoped to get to know me, and perhaps to ask me out.
They pass around these student info sheets, so we can form study cliques
and after a little bit, he smirkingly mentioned that he’d memorized my number.

Now, I’d barely even noticed him, I thought seating was left up to whim
before he could ask me out - I pointedly told him all about my boyfriend.
Now I’m sitting by a refrigerator-size guy who’s subtly giving me the eye
and as for his excessive use of space, I think he’s being passive possessive.

Monday morning before class, I’m going to catch the TA with her coffee and ask,
to change my seat to somewhere, anywhere, with someone, less transgressive.
I’ve been in classes, for years on end, I’ve been hit on and I’m not against making friends
but you have to know how to begin and not be so open, sneaky and aggressive.

I feel no enmity, just an awful awkward-ity and I don’t want him next to me.
Like the air-head I can pretend to be, I took a pic of him, disguised as a selfie of me.
If I’m ever concerned or slightly alarmed, I always manage to send a selfie to Charles.
.
.
Songs for this:
Messy by Lola Young
Every Breath You Take by Committed
Walk Like an Egyptian by Awaken A Cappella
.
.
Charles, a 55-year-old 6'4" retired NYC cop, has been my escort, driver, security and surrogate parent since I was 9 years old.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                         Two Pilgrims, Two Paths, One Path


                     “Where many paths and errands meet”

                                               -Tolkien


Perhaps we are seeking the same sacred grail -
If you find a poem in the cleft of a tree
Or hear a bird singing softly along the trail
Be assured – it’s only me

(is that a kitten I hear…?)

until now
this did not exist
a thought
brought pen to paper
that I could not resist
until now
this did not exist
so, I have to find a reason
for this scribble
on a perfect ****** page
until now
this did not exist
perhaps it was always
SOMEWHERE
for this precise moment
to fill a gap between
my wife coming home
and the end of an afternoon
turning to evening
until now this did not exist
then it was gone
so much potential
never reached

Plywood braces windows,
palms rattle fronds against siding.
gutters spit as the wind climbs.

My grandfather on the phone,
his voice a flicker in the storm’s static.
The lot crowds, then scatters.

A ball, caked in sludge,
drifts into the gutter,
a dog leaping after.

It’s hard to tell laughter from siren,
shouts from wind, or hold his words
no matter how tight I press the receiver,

its plastic warm in my hand,
cord twisting at my wrist.
He calls because the Gulf is darkening,

because he knows the water climbs,
because I have spoken of moving west-
a desert- another gulf between myself and family,

closer to safety, farther from familiar.
Land ought to hold steady,
not wash out from under you,

he says, not telling me to stay,
not quite telling me to go.
As he speaks, the clearest sight

is the aluminum door straining,
blinds clattering like bones, then thunder-
a crack like plaster, like bone, its greyness

everywhere the air will go.
This beginning is weight-
pulling me west, to where

his universe bends uncertain.
In the pause between thunder
and his drawled breath,

not the words
but the weight
he meant me to carry.