One August night after work, as the lights
pierced through the amber of beer bottles
and glazed the moist table like honey on skin,
I finally confessed to my friends I hadn't seen that
old movie they'd praised like a little spate of storms.
"I'm following the news," I said. "No time."
I secretly wished I could say the same to everything
else: But you hated this job! No time. Why didn't you go
after him? No time. Everyone's got a favorite lie.
"Just watch it! Prepare to be in love!" declared one
who believed that the fate of constellations never die
once tattooed around the wrist, closer to the pulse.
Prepare to be in love? But I have always been in love.
In fact, sometimes I think you are, and would remain,
that old news I'd want to hear or read all over again.
I guess that would make for a better front page
—To Be In Love!—trumpeting itself the entire
week over the litany of dead bodies found in the
peripheries of our distractions. But that's just me.
And perhaps among my friends, too: this knowledge
of a singular tragedy we are now all too willing to take.
Like an old movie we could play back on Sundays
each time the quiet suddenly invades us.