aftermath of a failed coffee date

painting by fred tomaselli

i sat down in the park and opened my orange notebook to see what words would arrive but was blinded by the bright white page tilting the sunlight back, making it nearly impossible to gaze at its emptiness. tree top tendrils tickle the blue belly above the clustered green clumps while a plane's soaring roar scrapes across my only sky. a young couple lopes through the green pie, shoulder to shoulder, their casual hands almost touching, but don't have to. a huge, metallic blue dragonfly patrols the periphery. the rhododendrons stash a day's worth of darkness beneath their dress. pollen floats through like angelic miniature sheep chased from an insomniac's dream. a young man in a green tshirt wheels his bike past my bench, turns and glares at me through the narrow slits of his grimacing dark eyes, continues, yet turns again and glares once more before he exits out the side of the circle like a martian arrow pushing toward chaos. my feet rest on cobblestones, moated by dirt. a yellow trash can yawns beside me. a six pack of bottled beer sits quietly on the dirt beside the can, a diminutive dog patiently waiting for its owner to decide, its mahogany glass glinting back. i look up at the black trench coated woman with curly red hair, toting a red handbag, and exquisite crimson lips, marching through, her downcast eyes dissecting the circle, muttering in the shadow of her breath. on the bench opposite mine there is a young man in a white polo shirt, lounging with a book in the shade while i sit across from him spotlit by noonday sun. another young man enters the circle, pulls off his primary blue tshirt, wraps it around his face, and lays down to broil on the browning grass. aftermath of a failed coffee date. i am the rant receptacle leaking oily hate as i cross the street, darkening the already dark. a pair of dragonflies play tag in the center of the circle, ringed with tufts of pubic trees. a butterfly tumbles just over my head. caressed by the breeze, my shirt is red. the wheeze of a bus as it turns into the circle, like a clock that finds its lost hand every half hour. i hear one crow caw repeatedly, bereft of his murder, but like me, he is not answered.