little fuses of bliss
confides the woman I once
saw flash an oncoming bus
on a different January day
I played in the snow
in my (ha ha!) mini skirt
when the sky turned blue-black
and what’s up with that?
so beautiful, and I hope
you’re blessed, your day
is blessed and full of
little fuses of bliss
sweet lady, I think,
I don’t mind your kind
of strange contagious
and say thanks
© Sarah Whiteley
I never told you that for weeks, the graffiti on the backs of the bus seats said quest and that’s how I knew to kiss you
here now, wondering what’s next, someone has scrawled exodus
this morning the rain had let up
just long enough during the night
that I was able to make my way down the walk
without worrying how deep the next puddle
too wide to leap would be
half a block ahead of me walked a man
whose dark jacket folded him into the gloom
but I could smell the heavenly clove
of his cigarette and inhaling deeply
thought it’s a damn good thing I keep mine
in the drawer at home safe from fingers
itching to light just one, which would turn
into possibly three, a missed bus and a wrong
perhaps deliberate turn down the wrong street
for a long pause in a certain small cafe
where the purple walls would hide me
from the workaday and I could settle to the task
of drinking a few too many cups of coffee
and everyone else can turn the world without me
but the man headed left down the alley
and my cloves were tucked in the drawer
six blocks back and there I was
with a for once on-time bus thinking
I may as well get on
© Sarah Whiteley
Things will be on the quiet side here for a while. Not a hiatus, really, but just working on a very exciting project. I’ll be keeping up with reading new posts, but the writing might be a bit on the thin side over here. But trust me – it’ll be worth it.
Cheers!
you were not there
while I waited beneath
the sudden rain for a bus
that moved somehow
swifter for not
carrying you along with me
as if Time slows
within your sphere
pausing for the same
hint of hesitation
I seek out each morning
that your eyes slide
unheedingly on
even the driver sees
it is you I read
and not the book
lying agape upon my lap
but it was when
you were not there
that soft and sudden
I discovered how this
untouched want may be
a finer way of falling
© Sarah Whiteley
because I was full
of the nape of your neck
I had no room for morning
no time for anything more
than following the lines
of your back
into abstraction
© Sarah Whiteley
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