Gravity

See the man.

Alone on the subway platform.
Note the crazed hair, a nimbus around his head,
a halo teased by distracted fingers
for hours while he hunched over his book.

His cardigan, buttoned by its sole button,
frayed and evanescing into flocculent haze.
Cat’s hair clings to him,
interweaving white and dark into the interstices.
The force of static alone
knitting an exo-sweater in the atmosphere around him.

He holds his broken-backed book an inch from his eyes,
his free hand absently plucking random cat hair.
Holds them
singly
at arm’s length,
releases them.
They drift, in dense currents of subway air,
falling back into the gravity and mass of his body.

Mark Aiello