Long...
Gray...
Walls...
Like an eternity of potential.
Like a sting stretched till meaningless.
Like thoughts too bland,
Uninfluential
And
Seedless.
Like going somewhere,
But paused in the going.
Like a photograph left here
Without even knowing
What was in it or why.
Like a brown-yellow dye.
Like a firefly in daylight
Like a black bear at midnight.
Like what you like
But not how you like it.
Like being lost in an ice cave
Without your fleece blanket.
An empty art gallery
Is like the loss in your mind
When you see familiarly
A face; smiling, kind...
And the name's on the tip
Of the pad of your tongue...
Something won't let you say it.
The suspense feels hung.
An empty art gallery
With long, gray walls
Where silence arises
And swells and then falls
Into the carpets--
They're red but they're dull--
And you walk slow at midnight
And hesitantly mull
Over the things
From which during the day
You felt unworried
And felt far away.
And now all the worries
And irrational fears
Arrayed on blank walls
Are invisible tears.
