We can walk into a room not knowing.
It doesn’t happen every time.

A white room can be painted to be pure.
I mean, just to show us that it’s clean.

But it doesn’t have to be.
We can walk into a room

not knowing whether,
or when, or even that.

That
can be the hardest room.

Only you will know.
First there is the walking.

The floor, a chair or two.
The posters

of visions
of someone else’s visit

to a room. Take a chair.

Only then the talk begins,
like a reckoning of beads,

like the body measures sweat,
words wrong

as a rainbow that has paled
to a shadow of itself.

There is always an end.
We can stand and walk again.

We can leave the room in silence,
carrying its moment

in and out of days.