A Cry From the Pond

You keep telling me in silence
in your nonchalant non-response that
I left you unrefined
your light fallen out of the socket
and the track you were walking on kept pulling
and rustling.

Well I couldn't have fixed that.
My needle and thread were built from
the worst leftover steel
and I needed that for patching my own
ripped skin up.

You were the worst cliche of teenage notebooks;
you were a scribbled-in-margins adjective
and never around long enough
to break out in a rash of sentences.
I feel now that I read you on a bus
and somehow smeared the fine print
and mistook your little wave
for a kindness.

I mistook your little wave for an invitation
to give you some words,
when all you wanted
was the cheap trick of delivery
and an easy saunter back for seconds.

I could be wrong;
there's always that.
But I bet every girl you've eaten breakfast with
says those same words
right before she's staring at your crumbs
and an empty chair.