Aquatic Tension

The diagrammable prescription
“in case of emergency”
is an herbal of dark
of the single finger you left waiting
in your water glass
limp and breaking aquatic tension.
Ears popped
and the apartment was marshalled through
we, the undersigned dark.

And man,
I was paying attention
to your words so good
that I forgot the song of the living room
and the content of the kitchen.
Which worried you.

You seemed worried
by my proclivity toward
concentration,
so you bent that lazy finger back
and tipped the undersigned glass.


So the spillage that occurred
at 4:45am Eastern Standard Time
happened simultaneous to
undersigned ear-poppage,
and with it
my focus rested
and ate with its small hands:
Eggs,
Toast,
Stymied juice,
Pills,
and Pebbles.

It burped and ran for the train.
And it tried hard to evade the fare
cause it didn’t think you should pay to
be scared in terminal dark.
And it found a man watching it
legs pinned in the turnstile
(a kind of device whose sole purpose
is to move in one direction)
in the eves of downtown paraphernalia
frozen in perceptive on-the-run
moments like these
focus knows when to dissipate
and join its own
undersigned.