Date Number One

She perfected her disorder

In ballet.

She suffered, then she loved

The classes,

Ordered and exact,

As long as she remembered.

Now, her skinny frame

Is shaking like a slender willow

In a tempest

Here inside the heated coffee house

In mid-November.

She is pulling her enormous creamy scarf

To wrap her pretty, pale, uncovered shoulders.

"I am quitting smoking,"

She apologizes,

Hands as skittish

As a Coltrane solo.

I cannot ignore

The echoes of anxiety

Like watching children playing near the edges

Of the roof too high above

The city street.

The ambers set above

Her rolling cheeks

Still glisten mellow

As they float in currents,

Choppy streams of rushing thought.

She asks if I frequent this place

And just how long I've used the app.

Her beautiful brown eyes are quicky caught,

Capsizing under trickling waters.

"Sorry.  I'm sorry,"

Napkin to her eggshell face,

Flat shoes the softest scurry

Out the ringing door.

- 6/11/26