Allowed to return again with books and coffee

And already late now going on fifteen minutes…

Cigarettes, and papers, a pen, all my things in order

Only now I’m missing my keys, as integral to movement as the will to move itself

Their loss anathema to my design

Perhaps the cushions swallowed them up last night?

I fell asleep watching Shadows, by John Cassavettes

A film I have seen many times before

For precisely that reason I like to play it as I drift off

The voices sound familiar

Like the conversations of old friends

Warm, and comforting, I feel less alone with their voices…

And as I slept perhaps my keys tore loose from my back pocket and made a run for it

Desperate to escape the subjugation they endure

Pushed back tightly so near my ass, so far from heaven

Forgotten and often discarded accidentally…

Yes, I think, discarded! (EUREKA!) I have found it!

The gold keychain my mother gave me of Saint

Christopher Peeking out from inside trash can in my kitchen, just below a banana peel

Holding Christ baby aloft amongst a sea of detritus

I must have thrown them away along with my empty coffee

But there is no sacrilege in the act

I don’t think they’ve ever looked as holy as they appeared then, awash in the filth

A glint of gold

Amongst the rubble

Of my solitary life