“the companion’s soliloquy“

The empty bench invites a second shadow,
yet hands stay burrowed in wool.
To ask is to confess the hollow place,
to cry “I thirst” before the well is offered,
and risk the sudden pity of an obligated smile.

It is a small, exposed, and trembling thing
to knock upon a heart and beg for room.
But to wait is to let dust settle on the second chair,
to watch lanterns flicker out in distant windows
and pretend solitude is some high, monastic virtue.

It is to stay a stranger to the feast,

starving politely on the porch of human grace.
now breath hangs visible in cloying air,
a wordless petition looking for an ear.
Must the beggar always name his hunger,
or does the keeper of bread already see the need?

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