Stillness Interrupts Me

Leaving, I was distracted by the next table’s affirmations, their attempts
to quell panic with joy. The wine didn’t taste like cut grass,
I couldn’t catch it. What could have been seawater sold
for twelve dollars a glass. We’re all just water balloons, my neighbor
reminisced. One hit and we’re gone. Above us hung a lattice of fraying
telephone wires with their ringlet hairs. Persistent sky.
To step into the street is a formal choice, your image a trespass
on the landscape’s constant motion. Facts in their precarity,
clouds ticking along. A shoe floats in the road like a drowned fish
or a buoy, a lover shows affection by damaging your skin
with their mouth, and pollinators land at rest in their blooms.
I recall their matching handbags. The pattern of roses,
roses without bees in them.