An American Sentence
Amongst the hundreds swirling about, which carries the note sent to me?
Amongst the hundreds swirling about, which carries the note sent to me?
Complexities aside,
or feigned naivety,
or a host of other postures
pedestrians enliven
at well traversed intersections
and forgotten alleyways alike,
our lives unlikely
to intersect again.
While memory had already
dropped the content
of the previous phone call,
not so this brush
with your being
and the glance,
your haunting glance,
held for but a second,
encapsulating the grace
and tyranny with which
we draw life, no,
with which we siphon life,
continuously.
Your haunting glance
convinced neither
of the next breath
nor subscribed
to assumed comforts,
exposed the starkness
of warfare in the midst
of a typical rush hour.
I will never learn the context,
but instantly knew
your eyes had
just seen or we’re headed
to a showdown with death.
Thankfully I remembered,
I should pick up some take out
on the way home.
That’s what the last call was about.