Tracey Knapp

Best Audience

Sometimes you just want to talk to someone—

a mime in the stairwell, your diabetic cousin,

the man on the train who groans as he falls back

into the seat as the train lurches onward. You don’t ask

if he is okay. Never run on pavement, he says.

You don’t have to worry about that, you don’t say,

still uninspired by treadmills, still thinking

in patterns, stupid choices on replay. Still complaining

to your coworker about Coke Zero and the latest revolt

on grains. Also, you are scatterbrained and it’s not

reversing. Later, you remember you left your

phone on your desk and there’s only one person to blame.

There’s only one person to blame and you mutter all the way

back to the office, no one to talk to. Then someone offers

you a handful of popcorn, and you’re talking to someone

about more butter. You’re talking to ducks

the next day by the lake!  You see your friend

in the cereal aisle. He says he’s doing okay.

You like talking to others when it’s too hard to talk

to yourself, when there are only mean things to say.

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Tracey Knapp lives in Northern California. Her first collection of poems, Mouth (2015), won the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award. Recent work has appeared in On the Seawall, New Ohio Review and Rattle.