Poem: Waiting For a Bus in a Room Full of People

A poem about connection.

The academic approached me
at the morning tea, said she appreciated
the playlists I added in the hope
of making the staff newsletter more interesting.

Instead of standing in front of me,
she stood right beside. And we both
looked up at the blank wall ahead,
a sea of other people may or may not

have been right there in front of us.
But that didn’t matter. They weren’t
exactly going to join in on this — they were
probably more excited about

the Xmas Mince Pies (blergh!)
Anyway, we talked about mixtapes,
and she told me she still hangs on
to a tape her first boyfriend made her.

“Don’t have anything to play it on,
but that’s not the point, I still know
everything on there — Led Zeppelin, etc”
And I said something about the emotion

that goes into a mixtape, and how careful
you must be around first and last songs
in particular. How every track had a history,
and all the tape hiss and needle drops

that made it onto the finished version;
such imperfections only helped to make it
perfect. Since eye contact is for job interviews,
and lovers, and fools — and maybe it’s all

just a Venn diagram anyway — we kept our
eyes front and centre, at the wall. And talked
for 15 minutes or more about playlists
and mixtapes. And then we both decided

that enough was enough, and made the same
excuse about work. And left. No conversation
was going to be better than that one. Connection
is not the same thing for everyone every time.

DALL-E