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hitchhiker
viki
holmes - Wales
and
yet you talk of love.
i
have said nothing,
drunk my drink,
made appropriate gestures
in
response to your remarks
i
have not been indecorous,
have not given myself away
our
eyes meet: i do not look away
neither do i hold your gaze too long.
i
notice the weave of your jeans
the
one place where
your hair curves out instead of in -
a
mark of where you slept, perhaps,
hotel linen for rented dreams.
the
minutić:
these things register
i
note them down
as
a scientist would.
i
have the measure of you,
marking out your eyes, smile, nose
things i had not remembered
not
your voice, the way you shape your vowels
your lips your breath and tone and pause
the
constituents of
your language
what you say
this i had not remembered
only that when i saw you first
my
heart snagged
like a burr on a trouser leg.
and
yet you talk of love,
lightly, as though it were an easy thing
something to decide upon:
‘today i will fall in love’ a date
to
be remembered,
as
though it were something
you
could help,
or
notice.
and
i laugh, brittle as peanuts,
dry-throated. this is a game,
rented linen, borrowed words.
does the seed know the soil,
the
soil the seed? still, it grows.
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