oubliette

Hey. 
Slowdown.
Answer the phone. 

Text back. 

Return to us. 

Don't kid yourself, 

or stop kidding yourself,

every early stage of connection is 
a fragile powder coated gossamer-like
and 

sometimes invisible opportunity- 

if you can’t see it,
it’s because you aren’t,
or
maybe won’t. 

Like, for example,
right there
you head down and
me in the foreground. 

Without even trying
you made damage happen, 

like UV radiation, 

unknowingly. 

But intentionally

to this visitor at your doorstep, 

who was forgotten 
as they stand before you. 

5 minutes max and any 
thin skinned relationship could be cooked.

You know you have effed it up critically
if after an amiable arrival 
you notice a faint sadness streak across their face;

so notice. 

a teardrop comet

chased closely by a silent satellite of acceptance 

and finally an awkward orbit of compliance
to leave

is not the escape velocity
anyone wants to feel. 

Geez. 
It may have taken 
a million years 
for their light 
to reach this moment. 

and you,

then,

without a word

disappear. 

The body knows when to go.

Particles disperse. 
Waves crash. 
Void Begins. 

Discomfort: an early warning bell 
for any flight response.

Don't blame this shit move on anything that’s gone viral.

We think that the last two years 
taught us to accept
being co-opted
in being ghosted, iced, and simmered- 

nope, 

peeps have been doing this to other peeps 
in doorways 
for years.

Pay attention: interruptions 
are more complex than frustrating work stoppages; 

especially for colleagues who crave invitation. 

The slower they fade from your threshold,

literally a non-space designed between real spaces 

to keep one place from being in 
or becoming the other place,

the stickier and thicker that relationship might be, 

at least to them.


Without question,
only a sociopath wouldn't want to be a someone
that other someones want to say hello and 
good-bye to.

And the silent departure is a killer.