NARRATION
Michael Keshigian
The other men from town
attempted to entice her with idle bravado,
offered to buy her drinks, asked for a dance,
in their flamboyant outfits garnered with gold.
He watched them stare intensely,
those savage glances
which say so much more than hello,
let them huddle around her
and compete for attention.
He bid his time in a faraway corner,
where the smoke filled air stained his eyes,
away from the embattled contestants.
He wrote on a pad from his pocket,
described her voice and beauty,
sensations he would one day read to her,
when the thoughts were coherent
and courage allowed him
to rouse her from ordinary
into the extraordinary ardor of his verse
through the open doors of his heart.
He would be the different one,
the flushed eccentric with common clothes
and a black notebook,
thick with words
she had never heard before.
He would be the charming misfit
who, in a warm summer breeze,
on the edge of night,
will capture her affection
with a narrative
it took so many nights to contrive.
