Good Acquaintances

Words have less substance than scents.
I have less substance than words.
All I am now is all awareness in memory;
the smell of his skin, caught in moments,
sensed barely.

I know him scarcely. I know him at a strange
and wary distance. Once, I touched his hand
and once I touched his face because
he told me I could and then he left
me to pace and fret and hate the
strange laugh that for awhile burst out;
cut back, cut off and seized with a shock
through my throat.

Once, he leaned over me repeating
the lyrics of a song; it was water.
Water drowned by smoke and background
conversation clatter.
He had to tell me twice,
but even he didn't know them all. Not yet.
About nine words to go:

"Two steps behind the rest, one fingertip
too long. The hole in the box they carried
spilled sugar in the road."

And he looked at me as if he knew I'd know.
I tried. Quiet beside him, I tried
not to notice his eyes, not to notice myself
running out of the stocked indifference I used.
Stock pile going down, used up to keep
steeled pieces in place lest they fly off and hit
the asphalt in a fit of sparks. Light bits
rejected by the dark street. No embrace
just screech and dissonance.
Stark contrast to spilling sugar landing soft
just above a whisper, or that of touch, of skin
to skin, when it meets in a glancing accident.

Beside him, quietly. Going on and rolling over
from one desire to another and somehow,
in the midst of all this,
all i can finally think to say:

"Something more. There needs to be a spoon, perhaps,
in the lyrics, for the lyrics are ... something
... there needs to be ... stirring."

{lyric excerpt credited to the band "Throwing Muses"}