Gray Lot

The parking lot held forty minutes

and I held the lot.

Gray sky through the windshield.

My face barely there in the glass,

a reflection so faint

I almost didn't recognize it

as reflection.

No music. No phone.

No reason to be anywhere

other than here,

waiting for someone to return

with bags of things

I would never ask about.

The sky was the color of nothing.

Not the nothing of sleep.

Not the nothing of a closed door.

The nothing of a blank page—

before you write it,

after you erase it,

during the time you're holding the pen

and haven't decided

if you have anything

to say.

I was holding the pen.

I was the page.

I was the sky

practicing at being

nothing.

When she came back with the bags,

I started the car.

The face in the windshield

moved with me,

still barely there,

still not sure

if it was real

or just what the glass

remembered.