She is enslaved
To a crippling piety,
That claws at her amidst
A hungry and looming world of
Soot and stone and steel,
And quick quiet lives,
Shared beneath carefully
Constructed guises and goodbyes;
It makes her tremble
Like a humming bird,
Till I fear her heart might burst,
But all the while she
Holds steadfast to her ruse,
That she will be rewarded
For her narrow devotion,
Her abstractly defined hatred,
Spoken in such cheerful octaves
Like a siren's morning banter,
Over the clink of cheap ceramic
Dinner plates laden with decadent
And lovely cuisine,
Too haute for her restricted pallet;
So rarely am I confronted with
Such a harsh paradox
That I sit in stunned silence
Contemplating the remainders
Of my own haute morsels,
Feeling my soul cringe,
Feeling my mind stagger back
In confusion like an actor
In an old silent film that had been shot;
The moment hovers between us,
The dissonance shattering about us,
Interspersed with oblivious tangents
Foreign jaded conversations'¦

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