She Said...

She said

     You seem lonely

and with those three little words

in a bar where smoke hung in the air like a lazy cat

batting at the muted din of drunken too loud laughing

smiles and cheap beer that infused everything like a

faded stain that had long ago effaced the ancient old

worn wood;

where the past and memories and lives and an

endless procession of nights reaching backward

through time had spilled and ingrained themselves

into the very pulp and marrow till all that existed

were ghosts taking up the familiar patterns that

those well-worn floors laid out like dance steps

to a forgotten song forever followed into eternity;

my reflection in those cigarette stung eyes red with pity

caused the gallowed floor at the bottom of my stomach to

drop open and instead of the quick snapping sound of my

heart’s neck breaking the slipshod noose tightened in a

suffocatingly slow squeeze causing my chest to constrict

and ribs to groan and strain under the heavy suspended

weight kicking then penduluming inside them until

eventually all was still;

only the jukebox was new,

and even it played the same old songs.