Just Another Evening

We had a great conversation,

she leaning toward me

paying attention.

Me venturing lines

I think are amusing

and she smiling

reassuring,

relieving my anxiety

and quite knowingly I suspect,

bolstering my dispirited ego.

My bedraggled self image,

exhausted, still collapsing

after experiences

of so many lows

with all the princesses

I’ve ever known.
–

I saw her through a prism

of adoration and fervour.

But I’d been imprisoned

in my own ideas and saw

husbands and lives

steered through mercurial romance

into bullying or guilt,

moulded into sycophants

with windmills to tilt;

I ponder.

Breasts are attractive.

Could I be wrong?

We’re checking out non-verbals.

Playing analytic psychologists

delving for those proverbial

signs that suggest,

should we combine,

it may indeed be favourable.

I could take her home; arrange to wine

and dine some other time.

Have fun, be close to someone.

Maybe lay next to her desire;

feel what transpires.

Or trudge home alone.

Her number on my phone

which tomorrow

will tangle with

the bramble of being,

and in time, I’ll forget

after one or two texts,

before I  press,

‘Delete’.

I glance from lofty heights,

in vainglorious defeat.

Again.

Just another evening

of light entertainment

with my questionable virtue

of self containment.

It no longer hurts

but neither one night stand

nor fun right hand

really works.