flight II

the chair was broken when you returned poet
the soft black folds of cloth pooled on the floor
still damp with

I imagine you expected an empty room like any other
early in the day, no students sitting at desks lined haphazardly in rows
empty in the banal sense
You forgot you put me here
You knew, having become no longer useful, I would be gone
from this particular life of the mind

If you imagine me rising grand and shining
a Phoenix from the celestial hearth
reborn and reenergized
tail feathers still damp with

you are wrong. I sat. I waited. I grew very small and
mouselike, slipped the bonds and
catlike, wiped the mask from my eyes and
picked as she-bear up the offending wooden article
all clean lines and worn surfaces
and lifted the chair high
gave a toss
sent it crashing
while I took flight, became lighter than air
passed through an open window on strands of honky-tonk

No room holds me
no one holds me
no holds

If I return to this room
you will not be here
emptier than before you brought me
I return not to seek you but as
pilgrimage
to ensure the splintered chair
and the pooled cloth
now dry but
gilded with

the physicality of these things a challenge
to the assumption there ever was a man here.