Girl, around 27.
No, woman, rather.
Her youth walked through and hung there, dry, as mine did in exchange
so we pick and choose a role and sidle along the bar where
I am with a perk in the feet, lifted by the ***** of,
but a lot easier than you can imagine as
she lays her words out like warm hands and with a blue bird of compassion,
asks me how I am.
I gripe and she listens in a knowing way then reverse
in very clean queues and open mouths

She says, “They say today is going to be the busiest day of the year”, with a fire lit
behind an eye where she does not smile of her face, but through a grit in the teeth

I laugh inwardly, towards myself in a search for appropriation and then spit heavily onto table, “well, it looks like we both have something to look forward to, then”.

Then angelic laughter where my cheeks couldn’t follow and I am ****** in.

There was a moment then, which I wish could be brought to plate and silver.
a sort of cunning lock between a soul and my own where I hope only to god,
that I’ve thrown a key down river.

She walks out after our matching eyes and mirrored moves
So I watch her,
not her ***,
not her chest,
not her brown, burning hair,
but the still skin of her neck in an open sense where I want to take it in
as if she had the happiness and I am jealous
like a tearing gabble of a baby.