The old woman at the bus stop
is a lover of all things:
I can see it in her tired smile
and the way her hands
are determined not to shake
as she colors in the squares of
today’s crossword puzzle.
Focused on her mosaic, she
does not hear
my dragging footsteps or
rasping breaths.
As I collapse next to her, everything is
quiet and I
hear her blood rushing
in her veins, singing a melody her
lips forgot.
I pretend I am her for
five sacred minutes,
finding mirrors in puddles
on the pavement and
battling time and gravity
trying not to sink through sidewalk into sewer
trying to spend eternity here.
But the bus comes like always,
its wheels
screaming silence into oblivion and
ripping loose newspaper pages
from their holy tranquility between
two leathery palms
and tearing the old woman and me
apart.