Before You Got There

Forty minutes early — that's mine to own.

I sat with water, watched the condensation ring

spread on the napkin. Not alone,

just early, just ahead of everything.

The circle widened. The paper fibers

went gray and soft, the whole

napkin giving up. Two strangers

at the bar. The dull scroll

of a sports channel with no sound.

I rehearsed the ask — the soft version

and the harder one, the ground

I'd give, what I'd hold. Immersion

in the hypothetical. By the time

the napkin had dissolved to wet

bar wood, I'd said it twice in my mind.

You came in. Sorry, traffic. Yet

somehow I just said no worries, hey.