A girl
Writes in taut letters that run together in long streaming sentences and in great blocks, sprawled judiciously across lined pages, simultaneously self-conscious of her subject — herself — and her surroundings (airport bar) wrapped up in the milieu of new sobriety.
Orders a diet coke.
Sneezes quietly.
I sit across the aisle, eyes blood shot,
glancing sporadically toward the obscene white glow
of a broadcaster’s award-winning dentation,
gnawing in rhythm with melodious Zanex.
Flight waiting.
Girl, the same one, in form-fitting yoga pants, shoulders casually slung in a light blue v-neck sweater, punctuates heavily.
She underlines me in every sentence of her black notebook.
Page 100 gets special treatment.
Islands of words surrounded by black ball-point ink.
A candid gliphial conjurer.
I think,
mine is a reservoir I can’t quite fill.
So she pours words like concrete.
But it won’t quick dry
harden fast enough to form a foundation.
She is saddened by sadness.
Longs to be enrobed by it.
And wear it as a gown.
She flips through the pages and retraces her words, bent over the page, hair loosely dangling above the paper.
A Coat of Red Paint In Hell 