in the waiting room, pretending to write poetry to pass the time there is one child yelling and the suffocating roar of too many people in too little space and too much pain a small tv cramped in the corner playing some reality show people i don't know choosing some contestant i can't see for reasons i don't care about "it's like black mirror" you say the song so far removed from the singer the performer so far removed from their audience: a surgical dehumanization of art. something left you breathless and i took you here breathless pretending to write poetry so you see you are not a bother i want to be with you. sometimes when we make plans, new ones are sprung on us like a chance meeting at a bar or stumbling into the right group on a night out or your best friend getting dumped and needing someone to see their ex-partner's favorite band live or you offered me the empty room in your apartment; the part of the story we don't tell enough is when we say yes. i could go home, i would rather be in bed, one hour into sleep after some dessert, a hot shower and a few pages of a good book like my unspoken plans from five hours ago; no, i would rather be in bed with all those things and you, in your bedroom snoring soundly too
Colette Stergios, ’23