NovPAD #15: Within the Hall

Okay. So … I am still about a week behind, and while I may not be catching up per se, I am at least not falling further behind. I feel good about that. And I feel better about my poems this year than last year, when I really felt at a total loss much more often than I do this year. All in all, I’m happy for this experience.

The prompt for Day 15 of the November Poem a Day was to write a poem about a trade-off, or an exchange, or forfeit/swap. I had intended for this poem to be about memory, and how people remember different aspects of an event – some are very detail oriented, but they don’t pick up on what’s actually happening or how people feel, and so on. It ended up just being a little story, and not what I expected, but I greatly enjoyed writing it because I didn’t know what this narrator was going to say next.

It’s really nice when you feel like a character has taken possession of you for a little bit. It’s not something that happens every day (for me, at least), but you kind of live for it, even if it’s not what you set out to have happen. The voice of this character I think was inspired by Nick Carraway of The Great Gatsby. Kind of an older period, pseudo-masculine, ruminating guy – which is typically the sound of my contented inner voice. In fact, when I imagine myself it’s never how I actually look, but usually I picture a man in a gray shirt and dark pants …. I don’t know if that’s normal or not, but I’ve learned to live with it. I should probably just get to the poem now. I’ll save that line of thought for another day; it probably deserves its own writing. There is not really anything in this post beyond the first paragraph that I anticipated posting, LOL.

Within the Hall

I don’t remember well

the things you said.

The past follows me, a haphazard eraser

swiping at the details of all my interactions.

I remember you from the neck up

perhaps the smudge of a blue shirt remains but

your legs are definitely gone.

And the background – not much left there

but a few faces

not looking at us anyway, and none familiar enough

to go on for context.

Strange bits still come to mind

the thoughts I held before

during and after we saw each other.

A general sense of wanting to be somewhere

or having been shortly before. Maybe I was in a hurry?

Or late. That always puts me off,

it takes a while to get my equilibrium.

I was anxious, but very possibly it was nothing

to do with you.

Your mouth was big that day, that much

I do remember thinking about

while you talked

about whatever it was you were talking about.

At some point the clouds shifted and a ray of sunlight

passed through a high window

of the room we were in -

Ah!  It was the lobby of a hotel or bank …

someplace old. I remember now

the round echoes of footsteps

the murmuring character of noise -

and the glint that flashed on a tooth

somewhere on the right side of your mouth.

I left it all, whatever I was thinking

and whatever you were saying

and looked.

I wanted to smile inside it was so unusual,

had I ever seen this before in life?

I think only in the movies

to mark the grin of a two-faced villain

but here it had happened, and I was still

reflecting over it when it happened again.

Imagine that! My luck.

I don’t know what my face must have looked like

to you but I shook my head

without actually shaking my head

and marveled.

It was the strangest thing

and really, if I’m honest,

all that I can remember

about the last time we talked.