The seat across from you is empty, in an 

emptier cafe on a bustling street.

Your watch is the apple of your eye,

the fixation you can’t seem to look away from-

until you hear the machine whirr with steam,

I know you can taste it on your lips. 

I can’t blame you, your watch is beautiful and yes,

I have kept you waiting here for two months

as the clock keeps tick tick ticking

and I find four more grey hairs 

because I can’t seem to get any younger;

I can’t postpone the inevitable like I could when I was younger. 

But your skin looks as soft as the sheets we once hid between,

and your hair smells just like the sky during a rare Arizonan thunderstorm. 

You look at your watch again.

I can hear your heartbeat tick tick ticking. 

You remind me, as my lipstick leaves a rosy stain on my lid,

that my fingernails could be the source of blunt force trauma if I wanted them to. 

and I do -- but they won’t be. 

It’s rare that I’ve seen you without your head in an old feminist tale,

or a new one that’s been written on my inner thighs. 

I listen to you babble on about your latest poem,

the one where I swoop in on my trusty steed -- a shiny Volkswagen Beetle in the place of a white horse -- 

to save you from the endless red neon light

that seems to coat every path across these Sonoran state lines.

I fell in love with you in that rosy glow but 

since when had I had the time to become a muse?

The way you tell it is captivating, 

and I don’t have the heart to turn your purple prose grey,

tell you I can’t save you because I want to stay. 

And I’m being dragged away to real life again, 

across state lines and out of the endless red neon light

back to another empty cafe on another bustling street

but now, it’s my heart tick tick ticking louder than your watch ever could’ve been-

god, when are you going to get that thing fixed?

I know you’re elsewhere now. 

Someone else is saving you in a different white horse 

disguised as a different Volkswagen Beetle. 

you left a note, but I can’t read it,

I’ve banished literature, no story is as perfect as the ones you write across my body.

The wind starts to smell like that desert air as I

approach a red neon ‘open’ sign. 

It isn’t the same as the neon light we basked in,

and it doesn’t smell quite the same as it did on your skin. 

But I find another grey hair

another tick tick tick on the clock. 

I never had time to be your muse.