Laurel in the Library at Night
She hates you at first sight, totters
like a newborn lamb from the force of her own
rage,

perplexedly, we busy ourselves in the
fuck everything else section, all backlit
and bookish alcoves,

my fingers thrumming against the
spines of books about the Salem Witch
Trials and when I look up

I catch you staring at me while I
laugh, full throated and
unfettered,

Laurel is a black cat; elusive
to the transfixed nature of her
peers beyond the

shuttering mouths of lovers
cumming hard on her
stomach,

she once wandered elysian
hallways, fuchsia beret against
the chestnut

of her grandmothers hair coloring,
and we (you & I, that is) are
transfixed by the buzzing lights

overhead, the symmetry
of all this darkness, like vampires
fully alive

when we are once again alone.
I do not think highly of this rage,
to be honest,

I do not think that she thins herself
for your benefit, but to be fair
I was under the thumb

of my own need, the greed
for flesh and facts and familiarity
so powerful that I found myself

nude before a parade of strangers
waiting
desperately

at the edge
of my seat
for the sound

of another man
moaning into my ear; or
just

the clicking of my cracking knuckles, but Laurel
was a layer in the back of my mind,
a nigh time

carousal, lit with ocher lightbulbs
twirling slow, eddying
into the mirage

of ghosts just beyond the reference section.