Hold

She’s getting anxious cause the song
is surely ending soon
and after one last little dust cloud
in the bathroom she is going home,
back in through her old window
she left open in a hurry
to get out of there.

He takes the taxi in the blurry light
of late night traffic on the outskirts
of a city all the others mock
with their fancy Doppler radars.
He is not sure what to listen to;
the radio, the road, or just the automatic
shifting of the gears.

She passes gamblers kneeling on
the sidewalk over dice and is so grateful
for the little bit of sound they make
in all of their complaining
and rejoicing at the news.
She would never make it through
this way again.

Tomorrow is his first day
on the job site where the ingredients
for concrete sit there waiting for him
eager to be mixed around and spread.

In the morning she is found out
almost instantly with her private door
now missing from the hinges,
and the force within her fathers grip
wrapped tight around her wrist
as she is clawing to get closer
to the mirror.

About halfway through the day
he splits his palm open on
a bent corner of a wheelbarrow
and the blood gets in the concrete
and on his orange vest that keeps him
ever visible.
They offer up some bandages
and assure that over time
it will get better.

That night they both sleep
deeper than they ever have before
and it is only by the grace of solid floors
they didn’t sink down through
the Earth itself and wrap around each other
at the very core of all of this
world’s gravity.

It doesn’t look like much
he says to her there
but it could do
for just a while if you like it.
She takes a second then replies.
It’s fine enough for now,
but it will never have a hold of me.

The pressure at the center sounds
like T.V. static over a movie scene
where everybody screams,
and all the light is red
due to the magma of the inner mantle
crashing up against itself.

They close their eyes
and hold each other.
as all the light slowly shifts to white
and they wake up
in their separate beds.
She puts her make up on
in her reflection in the window,
and he wraps a little gauze
around his cut up hand
which never hurt again.