TO THE DELICATE GIRL WHO SAT BESIDE ME ON A CROWDED BUS
In deference to your delicacy
(How does one know such things? The shoulder knows)
I held to the seat-top on bus curves
not to lurch ungainly your way.
I read an old New Yorker, pretending
I failed to sense you beside me,
but came a bump at a turning you fell
against my arm. You felt like cream.
Later, at the end of our journey,
standing to leave, you halted -- it seemed
my leg had caught your gypsy skirt.
We laughed, of course, as I released you.
“Had you trapped a bit,” I said,
and that was the end of our brief affair.
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