Shock always hits second, though your arrival is never anything
but a surprise. First comes recognition, no, something less
novel than even that. Acknowledgment is too great
a word, even. You don’t acknowledge your couch,
you just know it’s there. I’m never surprised to find what I know
will be there to catch my weight. So I sink
into what I know is there because it has always been there without
even looking down. It is only once I’ve interacted with what is always
in that one spot in the room in my mind that I can be grateful for its presence.
This is all to say that when you walked into
the room you weren’t supposed to be in and met my gaze,
shock came second. Because, in my mind at least, you are always
supposed to be in the room. To see you where you weren’t meant to be isn’t unusual;
you have been in every room I’ve been in since we met;
everyone knows your name and your order in the bar of my mind.
The most regular of regulars. And so I see you, I smile,
and it’s not a surprise because of course you’re here.
And then the people around us cheer
and I remember
the plans you said you had and the reasons you couldn’t come and
oh. Oh!
What a thrill.
I cry while you stand before me,
cat post canary feast, reveling in the math I must do to understand
that you are stood before me for real, not just as my favorite couch in my favorite
corner of the mind that I live in.
Mmmmm lovely images.