David Estringel

Coffeehouse Romance

I see you,
alone,
reading Raymond Carver
at a table for two.
Straight, black hair—
lightly greased—
falling in your face.
You brush it away,
saving a page
with your right thumb,
I notice
the smoothness
of your hands,
the fullness
of your fingers.
Your eyes
are lost in ugly life—
I think they are brown.
The angles
and curves
of your face
sing
in their own silent poetry.
You turn a page.
I long
to dip my face
into your cupped hands
and drink in
the smell of you.
To taste the sweat of your palms.
To kiss the fingertips
that have touched
the sum of your parts.
You catch my eye
so I look away.
You keep reading.
I wonder—
for a moment—
what it’s like
to be that chair.
You close your book
and get up to leave.
Passing me by—
warm—
smelling
of faded cologne
and sweaty jeans,
I devour you
at every inhale.
You leave me,
unaware
that for a moment
you
were everything
that mattered—
my cathedral—
and with the ghosts of fingerprints
lingering upon my tongue.

(Originally published at Cajun Mutt Press)