With your hair in a knot
and your long legs crossed
at angles
so impossible
that you must be
tied up
and
twisted inside,
I can’t imagine you
living in the world.

I can’t imagine you
living in the world outside
that cocoa brown leather armchair
in this hipster cafe
where you wouldn’t drop your book
if a gun went off,
but I know you had to come from somewhere.
You surely weren’t born in the stock room,
swaddled in coffee filters,
and raised by baristas
on a diet
of mini-scones
and lattes.

No,
if you’d been raised on lattes,
you wouldn’t be sitting still at all.
But you’re very still,
at least on the outside,
while on the inside,
you might be making a dress from draperies,
running from a mob
of angry villagers with torches,
or gazing deep into another’s eyes.

But you won’t gaze into my eyes
if you don’t lift them from that book.

Excuse me.
What are you reading?