Tattoos and Torn Jeans
I always see you, legs crossed, at the same table outside the window where I'm sitting at my station, laptop open wide, the only sound the clicking I am making as I look up from the keyboard, taking in the hole torn in your jeans-- offering a tasty shot of latte colored knee-- and a phoenix preening red and orange as the setting sun on your long blonde bicep. Sometimes you're there with older men who seem to know you all too well. Sometimes you're alone with just your cigarettes and the weather. Our eyes connect occasionally but always from that distance created by the glass and my assumptions about the laws that separate us . . . age . . . a look . . . an attitude . . . perhaps a certain class . . . It's a void that I can fill with any narrative that stains the pristine pages I routinely write. I tell your story to myself always casting you as bad news that I can't help reading. You're the rent boy or some other rogue who would approach only for a reason I'd regret. I can make you lost or dangerous. I can leave the safety of my sipping and my typing and I can put you in the middle of my hack dreams where button downs and khakis tangle with tattoos and torn jeans. I can twist our tales like taffy where there is no real or imaginary line and no reason to remain here, sitting at my station.