04/05/20 First Gear, Without Traffic

And today, suddenly, everything went quiet,

do you remember?

Not in that;

“hey, I just didn’t want to shout”

kind of way,

but

quiet,

like the neighbor’s dog went home.

quiet,

all of you’s in me,

went on strike;

no,

departed for an errant

without leaving a note,

fled recklessly

on a last minute holiday.

So quiet

I couldn’t drink my coffee

without interrogating it

grain by grain,

pleading with the HVAC system to give me a steady beat,

offered the salt bowl a story or two

and then asked it to dance –

it said no.

That kind of quiet;

have you seen it?

A complete strike in every exercise of thinking,

all of my wants sent to the gods;

quiet,

like

there was never any traffic,

only the memory of you

rushing by

rushing by

and a light stain

on the couch

Where someone once spilled

an ounce of wine,

and someone else,

thank god,

never bothered erasing the evidence