Love you chimes the young woman
who sports a sleek red scarf, steps
into the elevator, snaps her cell phone
shut, flips her shiny hair back,
pops the metallic green cover open again.
Meanwhile, the scent of magnolia and I huddle
near the aged white buttons blinking
yellow one by one, my eyes down
like a guest trying not to eavesdrop.
I’m forced to hear, though, the loud chat
followed by another voice, urging me
to “snatch the damned scarf and squeeze
youth around its raw, entitled neck.” I would
empathize were Love feeling peeved at its name
appropriated into pulp and slung around
in fear like needy children calling “mommy”
all day long. But another voice protests,
“Actually, Love would say, ‘Look, it’s like this:
Love you wants to wash the dirty dishes
and put them up, wear clean undies
before going out, brush one’s teeth, floss,
put the right music on in case either one
or the other falls, like from a tall building
in the middle of business, followed by flames.’”
I’m pondering whose melody could last me
through the ages when the scent of magnolia
and I are interrupted by love you, too again,
and the cell phone mouthpiece clamping shut.
“Sweetheart,” I’d like to say, “we’ve both lost
out. Isn’t it maddening how we might have been
friends for one ephemeral flash? Caught each other
off guard, enhanced one another’s dance?”
On the other hand, for the life of me I can’t stay
annoyed with the up and coming young being
in the universe in the form of a woman
waving her arms to some other body loving
her, more or less, across the telephonic sea,
which is safer than the unfamiliar three feet
between us and our bodies pulsing so much light
and energy we can barely take it. I feel
a quickened silence in the slowing-down ascent,
the subtle rattle as we reach the edge where each one
of us waits to get on or off, mumbling to ourselves
beneath our breath and body dust and scent
in the air exchanging stories, mingling
as we pass each other nameless, sometimes touching.