Confirmation

She pulled the letter out
of a booth cushion,
at a diner downtown.
The old fake leather
cut smoothly against
the blade of her roommate’s
pocket knife. Who was sitting
across from her keeping watch
for the pacing manager,
through the small square of glass
in the middle of the kitchen door.

She read the words in her head
and they talked about it all.
The shadow of the banister
from the stairway that led
to their old apartment.
All the things she saw
when they ate mushrooms
while dancing in the shade
of giant pulsating amplifiers.
That concert haunted her mind
when she looked out the window.

Surrounded by half-transparent walls
she let the city’s lights pull her eyes
into their centers.
The headlights and stoplights
in the streets now distant galaxies
of old memories, somehow
no longer imagined.
The figures leaning against
lampposts outside the the chorus
of an endless play;
that started at night and shaped the day.