“is there something you would like to tell me?”
maybe, but i am not sure. this is what will happen: i will tell you something, but it will not mean anything. it will not be in any way connected to my thoughts, as if my mouth couldn’t safely persuade the words to come to my lips and swallowed them whole instead. the exchange will be forgettable, like banalities uttered between strangers waiting in line. there will be a concluding smile, in unison, and you will think nothing of it.
“have you been waiting long?”
i draw lines parallel to the ones you follow, but i ignore the coincidence. i try to write it down on leaves so that it doesn’t leave me, but the pen slips through my fingers. it’s not that my fingers don’t want to hold the pen—it’s more that the pen has a mind of its own, like my mouth. i throw the leaves back to the earth, preferably under the long shadows of a nondescript tree.
“is this where you live?”
if you are asking me if i could be happy here with you looking through the window from outside, at a scene inside, then the answer is yes. there is no need for a door when i see a table, a black pen, stale water, and two people all tangled up like roses made wild by the storm.