Thursday, June 13, 2013

Small Talk

I wrote this one a long time ago. I'd forgotten all about it. This was rejected by an online magazine, which you should read sometime. It's delightful.

Needy, greedy and extremely selfish…
The words ring like an alarm
That refuses to snooze.
How easy  it was to say
“I don’t care!”
You tell me about relative advantages and disadvantages
Of things like cell phones, laptops and tablets.
You tell me the detailed algorithms
Of searching for something
And sorting out among other things.
All I do,
Is watch your black, beetle eyes,
Searching for indices and pointers,
Backtracking to see what I missed.
I sort the things you tell me
Into neat stacks of truth and lies,
Pop things during fights
And push some more elements when we make up.
I touch the back of your hand,
You smile at me and ask me what I’m thinking about.

I begin to tell you how my cat went missing.