#UnspokenInCrowds

I watch you unfold your newspaper like wings,
three tables away in this crowded chaos—
your hands, weather-mapped, conducting
an orchestra of absences.

You don't know how I've memorized
the way your shoulders slope toward some private grief,
how I've given names to your sighs
that float like lost satellites between us.

In this fluorescent universe
of clinking spoons and morning babble,
we are twin planets in separate orbits,
spinning stories we'll never tell.

Your reflection fragments in my spoon:
mouth pursed around words
you'll never speak to anyone real,
drowning in sugar-packet...