You still owe me the night when you said you would
bring me to the parking lot cinema
to share a warm Coke and a bucket of popped corn
the summer of decades past

You forgot my dress in your mother’s car
on the night of my sixteenth birthday
she drove it to Kansas
and arrived in Oz, never to return

You majored in Economics your freshman year
and graduated with a masters in
The Fine Arts
of Bun Wrapping

I searched Eighth Street
and got the dress myself
it’s gray now, with four layers of dust
but it brightened your rare gaze then

Your cup of steaming latte
and Mister Eliot under your arm
you veil your face behind his pages
until your coffee freezes over

Your eyes glaze and they see distance places
the arid lawn of autumn dandelions,
and a splintering door frame
can’t tear you from your dusty pages

Leave your poignant poets on the porch
and come back inside
The Wasteland is going nowhere
and so we must talk