"How did you get my number Faust?"
"Your coffee is cooling down."
"I don't drink coffee."
"I know..." I sighed, "Christopher Poindexter."
"Huh?," she breathed through the phone.
"Have you read anything of his?"
"Um...no."
"Let me do that for you then."
"What are you doing Fau-"
"Just-
let me read you something."
Silence.
Three people walked past the cafe doors and all that time static was my only answer at the end of the line.
"Okay."
"Small towns are prisons.
Well, of course unless you
fall in love. But even then,
they are a tiny, little hell-"
"Faust..."
"Let me finish, Chiara," I insisted,
"I urge you:
Go find buildings and
mountains and oceans
to swallow you whole.
They will save you, in a
way nothing else can."
"What's that suppossed to mean? Why would you read that to me?"
"You tell me."
"How did you get my numb-"
"What's holding you back? What's keeping you in such small town?-"
"Faust-"
"No.
It makes sense.
You're so far into the
land of the droughts,
you won't even take a sip
from the shore,
and you're killing your heart,
it's so dry and
bare
it's being withered to
dust."
"Faust-"
"No.
Stop running from me Chiara."
"You don't know anything about me."
"Then,
I'm going to heat up your coffee."
YOU ARE READING
I named her Africa #Wattys2015
PoesiaI didn't mind if my fingertips were rusted with coffee grounds, or if my palm still hosted bread crumbs, I reached out my hand across the table, and you squeezed it but proved me wrong. My mind was spiraling, my heart, unstable. ____________________...
