The Girl at Table 5
There is a girl,
blue-eyed and sweet,
offering glances to me from across
the restaurant.
Sultry and blonde
with a with just a slight tinge
of brown pecking through, beautiful
not in the way that, say, the
Rondo alla Turca
is beautiful,
(she’s more Vivaldi than Mozart)
but more in the way that
the smell of fresh sage, or
the first trickle of summer sweat
is beautiful.
She’s sneaking a bite of what
I think might be a bagel,
no cream cheese (how strange),
peekpeekpeeking up at me
-eversosubtle
like the last breaths of a dying chime.
She doesn’t think I’ve noticed.
“More coffee for ya?” and
I extend my cup for more
bitter burned slop-water.
Shy too, this one,
taking miniscule nibbles
of loaf and gruel
raising a cotton pale hand,
gently brushing a blushful
cheek and drifting her
effortlessly flawless face towards the window,
hiding from me the shameful
truth that she too, needs to eat.
She’s a doe,
skiddish and serene
pausing at a puddle to drink
while I crawl through the grass,
desperate for the slightest touch
of softness, holding my exuberance
in reserve, not daring to break a branch
or startle a fallen leaf from its burial
plot, inching closer but never too
close to that figure sitting
two-sections-and-three-tables-over.
I love the way she curves.
The line of her nape, the form
of her back, the shape of her.
A man would wish to be bold in her presence
if he could only
muster the courage.
I’m staring,
and
so is she.
She smiles an earthquake and blushes,
and I
look away.