by Didi C.

Another summer sunset.
Another crashing wave.
“Another glass of gin,”
says the gentleman –
for his need is very grave.

The brass band tarries and
the silverware clanks.
Dainty hors d'oeuvres are
plucked from silver platters,
with not so much as a thanks.

A late-June star hangs low
in a dusty, dusky sky –
a cloak for the constellations,
for the night is young
and they’re still shy.

Stirred by the scent of jasmine,
our gentleman spots a familiar face.
With a smile, he greets the woman
and asks, “my dear, how can you
bear this god-awful place?”

With a shiver and a shrug,
she’s a blur of flittering white –
Like an anxious apparition
hovering at the edge of a burnt,
brown sea of numb delight.

Knowing it’s never a matter of if
and always a matter of when,
she says, “It’s nothing to show up,
flap your lips, soak it in, go to sleep,
wake, and do it again.”

But her fingers twist in knots,
and her posture breaks rank.
She looks past the gentleman, 
depositing her unsaid words
in a private thought-bank.

Discretely, he takes her hand
and says in his quiet way,
“But at least there’s this.”
She nods and they both relax,
committed to stay.

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