Inserted Sentiment

The writer tries to make a poem that means nothing

and this is it. There are three desperate women,

each trying to be unattainable;

they slept in a strange hotel last night

where the cracks between the ceiling

and the wall were wide enough

for music to escape

and condense in quiet quantities,

like smoke, like puddles, like

the thoughts of a man

who wants to leave his wife

but can’t quite handle a third divorce.

They all wanted to be adults

until they knew what it meant "

they wondered what it’s worth to be young again

once you know the things that grown-ups do.

It’s not the body that changes as much as the mind.

Blood stains clothes, decisions stain skin,

and next time it will be different,

It’s always different,

it’s never different,

but the lies become more complicated.

You choose which ones to believe

and you say you love them.

You love them. You do. It’s in your nature

to need to love something. There is a man

and he is ordinary, but he spends his weekends

at the park instead of the bar,

and perhaps that’s kind of nice. Her judgment

of his looks becomes forgiving.

He is approaching his 34^th birthday

and he’s found himself staring at bridal magazines

even though he has no girlfriend.

He wonders if he’ll die alone;

he wonders if there’s any other way to go.

The writer wonders if this poem is necessary,

or if such casual observations

only make her more ambivalent.

The elevator always stalls on the third floor.

By the time the doors swing open, she wonders

if she even wants off. Three desperate women pack their bags,

they’re disappointed, and a man who’s almost 34

walks out of a room with a woman he doesn’t seem to love

but holds possessively, and her arms are bruised.

The writer wonders. The women don’t,

they disappear like sounds of a fading song

and don’t come back.

The writer doubts they’re worth replaying, anyway,

but what about the man with bruising hands,

the same hands that never dare reach for the bridal catalogs

that he'll never pick up,

what about the girl he's bruised like yesterday's fruit

using those same searching hands, 

why do the women next door felt no need for concern, and why

should anyone find these bland and faceless people 

so extraordinary?

The writer wonders

if the world was meant to be observed but not assessed,

wonders if making a point

in a story or a poem such as this

is really all that necessary.

If it is, she wonders where to place the sentiment.

She turns to watch the numbers sink as the elevator goes.

She waits for signs of hesitation in the mechanics, waits

for the stop and stall of the elevator's gears. 

They leave her with nothing left to say of their endeavors,

watching each pair of disappearing hands that have hurt before

and hope to hurt again. 

The writer leaves her poem vapid,

though she almost hears its moans

in the crack between the ceiling and the wall,

beyond the music that is noise,

beyond the sound.