The last twenty minutes I have spent wandering
in small and smaller concentric circles
about my bathroom floor,
sliding my hands along the wall, head down,
feeling the carpet numb beneath my feet.
Small because the room is nothing but
and smaller because I have been thinking
of a certain smile that you lay ownership to.
That’s the one,
the one you gave me when I pointed you out
sitting in the front row, and suddenly
I wasn’t the only one on that stage.
I was the only one ever.
And increasingly it has become as if
the world is a tiny, rickety stool
that I am trying to balance on
as everything else shakes around us.
And I think that if I were to choose the last moments,
and I mean the very last of our lives,
then this might just be one of them.
And this.
And that one there.
Agitation of hands. Strength of words. 