Fringe

Vignette // Fringe Cafe & Eatery

It’s in your blood, sugar,

the faint dizzy headiness of vocal chords

thrummed in time with clumsy thumbs.

Your scrawl, a million dollars worth

of ink on a sign up page. I spy your easy grace

up on the stage and take notes.

This loneliness is the broad I've taken turns

in dancing with, a chase I know I can’t outrun.

Do you know the one? It grows

in the flickered buzz of an amp extinguished,

of dirtied tables wiped clean and open

signs relinquished of their full day’s work.

It grows in the front seat of an empty car,

keys hanging flaccid from an ignored ignition,

into thoughts of two glasses for one at a close-by bar.

This melancholy is my context, each moment spent

alone in silence intent on naming this ennui,

and I cling to each rung of this ladder

though the ground rests right below me.

You, time traveler, bear the lines growing on my face.

Your number sign has more digits than mine

but we hail from the same race.

Encapsulated in your asymmetry,

charming man, your tunnel’s lit ends beckon

and, emboldened, I reckon I’ll follow.