The Seconds Before the Lion

The house lights didn't fade; they just quit.

The guy three rows down was mid-cough and then

he was gone, swallowed by a velvet kind of soot

that makes the exit signs look like bleeding teeth.

I’m sitting here with my elbow stuck to the armrest,

feeling the gummy residue of a stranger's soda.

It’s a specific, hollow silence, louder than the cars

clogging the street outside, a vacuum of waiting.

In this dark, I could be anyone, or nothing at all.

I could stay in this chair until the film turns to dust

and never have to answer a phone or a question.

Then the projector hums, a silver eye opens,

and the dust starts to dance in the beam, reminding me

that the world is about to start screaming again,

and I’m still just a person in a sticky seat

waiting for the light to tell me what to feel.