mimosa keep

somewhere between conversation and grammar I lose my voice
I lose you, too
and I don't care
I've wasted too much time already helping you keep up

"don't wait for them to catch up," he says, stoned and flagrantly dressed, "they never will." Much later he's in a hospital playing pool calmly and arranging friends to ask me to visit him (which I did – as you might be able to tell from the detail) and then plying me with questions about where he kept his stash and I keep telling him I didn't know where he kept his stash ...

(remembering most of all saying I was safe that night although I don't think what he heard is what I meant)

... and then telling me he lied. He didn't keep his stash in the ceiling tiles and when I ask him where he did keep it he talks about game strategy. He smiles a lot and escorts me politely to the door where the guardians let me out.

I never hear from him again.

and then there's the sweet willowy girl who greets me outside the bank leaning against a railing as those with more economical intent swirl around her. the wind sensitively arranges her delicate hair. she looks up, giving me a mona lisa smile, distracted for a moment from her olfactory study of a wild blossom, slender fingers softly caressing it's petals ...

(remembering a studio apartment filled with her large canvases of naked women and the sub-audio throb of longing)

days later I find her friends sitting on the steps of the cathedral in what appears to be post-event conversation. "I've seen her," I say to them. They are shocked. Where? When? I must have been mistaken. Suddenly there is silence. They shutter their eyes and turn their heads. I move on.

messages of the heart. they meant something else to me than to everyone else. I followed those highways. now I never go into the woods. I might get lost.

pale mimosa blossoms are replaced by hardened seed pods
— Elaine Greywalker