- You were thinking of someone else when I showed up, I, a vision that surprised you.
- It wasn’t as if I’d materialized out of nowhere.
- It was that long ago you decided I wasn’t enough and desire led you elsewhere.
- So our meeting like this, sudden and unexpected, made you start,
- as if I was the apparition and you were the one confounded.
- Surprise is a mild form of alarm and let me tell you,
- seeing you like this, now when my life has a different meaning
- and you are not among its common, or even uncommon, occurrences,
- seeing you like this alarms me.
- I won’t speak for you.
- We try but we cannot look to the roses for conversation.
- It’s wishful to think they can fill in this awkward silence
- with anything other than fragrance and thorns.
- What can I possibly say to you when you have ceased
- to be peripheral to the periphery of my outermost emotional outpost?
- Am I required to put up appearances for you
- just because of this accidental meeting in some sterile mall
- where you’re not even wearing your red heels
- and I’m buying flowers for someone else?