What We Wear Down

I'm standing in the parking garage

forty minutes after you said you'd be here,

and I notice my shoe

has worn a groove into the concrete.

Not deep. Just a darkening.

Just the spot where I've been shifting

my weight back and forth,

and the surface

gives up, goes softer,

accepts the shape of me.

The fluorescent light hits it

at an angle that makes it look

intentional, like someone took a blade

and scored it, but it's just

my heel, just my waiting,

just the small repeated pressure

of a body that couldn't leave.

I could walk to the elevator.

Instead I keep looking

at the groove, at the proof

that I was here,

at the way the concrete holds

what I pressed into it

without meaning to press

anything at all.

My shoe has already changed the floor.

My standing has already

left a mark.