The Wait

The Café door gives out a minor, gleeful jingle.

turning to face the frosted, weathered glass,

Through it passes all too common custom,

Disengaging,

This is no house of ill repute,

Just sterile walls designed to mask the dirt,

A battle over, long since lost.

Sit on surly seats.

Sit and wait, as each moment slaps your face.

A clinical tick, bathed in antiseptic, burrowing through a frazzled cortex.

Into a stomach, indeed a pit, frequent stones are dropped and splash,

A resonant pulse that ripples through the rib cage.

Recognised as fraught apprehension,

A hated weight of indigestible worry,

Persistent parasite, or one time butterfly,

Reversed pupa, as unwelcome as ever.

Hands pass by and over each other,

as if meeting for the first time.

Aware of their own, close, clamminess,

They betray the thudding fear of this impending meet.

I try and distract my self , forming ill conceived narratives,

Becoming my own woeful Jester.

Nothing works, the meet is near,

My mind prepares to bet, to prophesise,

At best always only ever the wildest of guesses.

All the while it hangs over me,

this, the densest of certitudes.

Time is as space, being travelled toward, visibly near.

It passes by with such furlong lament,

Treasured like a sole surviving heir.

Leaving, it plants a kiss on the fore head,

Sympathetic, but powerless,

This meeting can not be helped.