Anchors in Part

We sat at the bar. Red wine and Bass Ale flirting in our glances. We watched the football game neither of us were interested in. Because there was no place on any wall to look where it wasn't.

Pieces of other peoples' conversations breaching our gazes. While we dug deeper for a listening that had been buried too long. The world inside those walls writing our relationship in spatters on dirty cocktails napkins. And the change from too many twenties left under bloated ashtrays.

That was back before every pleasure wasn't a burden. And strangers could congregate in preludes to sex. Teasing their prey with second hand smoke and the vacant motels November imposes upon small town lovers. Smaller hearts. We could suspend our loneliness in the viscosity of the labor. Intimacy ground down to its barest hub. Body and mind intrinsically committed to the preservation of numbness. In any and every form. Parallel parking the flesh to flesh. On busy streets. Where the traffic behind builds quickly. And there is no time to pause. To learn who this stranger we're saving is.

We pulled to a stop. At the wharf.

And watched the boats. Going nowhere.

Sails too hungry to ever be quenched by a single wind.