She says she's never danced by herself.
I can't feign surprise.
I think back to our last date,
and see her face in my mind:

The darts around the room.
The delayed, half-panicked smile.

She relaxes some when I take her hand.
How she wishes I could whisk her away then,
take her to a place where no one is staring,
and we'll dance and dance the night away like some kind of dream sequence playing behind the lyrics of her favorite karaoke song.
(Or maybe I'm just projecting.)

She says she likes it when I drink.
She says her father used to drink.
I can't help but think there may be some issues unresolved.

Not enough to stop me from putting my arms around her
as we watch the paramedics load the guy with the ****** leg onto a stretcher and whisk him away.

You can't go on without me,
but I can't go back alone.
The fold has bent and crushed them all while staring at their phones.

I sold the dream they bought me,
if only for your smile.
The tide has swept them all away in currents of denial.

I swear I swore an oath at some point, to some ideal that seemed worth stealing, so at least I'd have a confession to make while doing all this kneeling.

This crushing ultra lightness. This heavy ever empty.
These vain puzzle pieces crashing through the vacuum.

She's counting calories and mumbling numbers aloud,
making minute adjustments to the value they've assigned her.
Determined at birth, but her worth should be more impacted by what she's found.
She dreams of the day when she can throw figures away and have her intangibles defined:
the tone of her speech,
whittled down beliefs,
her finger-***** sharpness of mind.

She tracks the dates and diets while waiting,
not impatient nor growing frustrated.
With faith, she knows there will come a day when she'll finally be loved by the blind.

There are some things he can't refuse.
He goes into the dark with a ***.
He's probably out there right now, proposing to a masseuse
with balled up bills in a box.

Caked in sticky layers of soot, from the burning down below.
Layers of filth to fertilize his rotten garden growth.

Bathed in neon light, he goes seeking the obscene.
He showers every single night,
but his mind is far from clean.

Paint with red creation,
white skin tightened grip.
She's grown too sharp with patience;
a ***** to let it in.

Come on if you please.
Stay here if you need.
Pray on bended knees.
(I'll say the rest is due.)

The good men all are taken,
they've taken 'til it's gone.
Sordid imagination,
is this the man you want?

Come on if you please.
Stay here if you need.
Pray on bended knees.
I'll say the rest is due.

The spiral down.
The leaking of pocketed things
swirling above towards sunlight:
3D text of a spilled life.

What you did.
Who you loved.
The things you ate and the things that ate you up.

Awakening in reverse.
A return to the obscurity from which you were born.

The sea keeps no record,
marks nothing in stone,
but sings a eulogy for everyone ever lost to it
heard from any coast.

If my life were less interesting,
would you be less interested in it?
Or me?