A familiar bar

On a familiar High Street

The setting of a familiar scene

Foolish I sat conversing with a 37-year-old

Who was everything but you

Out of politeness my outer-self listened

Whilst the inner could only yearn for one familiar face

But you had already become as infinite as the star

Absorbed in the ethereal mass of sky

Love's labours lost forever to my touch

But brazen burning brightly

Uncomfortable, uncomforted, above all out of place

And unable to see night's sky

I rose gripping bar stools half-sober, half-souled

Achieving intoxication of another base kind

Half made mad with pensive sighs

Choking on cigarette smoke

I hit the street and the cold hit me

As did the sober realisation that I'm empty

And have yet to learn, in my ebbing youth

The salvation of self-reliance.

Natasha Haidar © 2004