She claims to have seen his writing somewhere, and thus she now knows him as one would know an old friend. Where did you see this? Oh, I picked up that slim chapbook put out the creative writing program twice a year. Those poems are terrible. I have given up writing after they came out. No! I was really moved by them. How did you know it was me, when you walked to my table a few minutes ago. I saw that you had a tower of poetry books before you. You are very bold for a woman. Yes, I can be when I choose to be. And I think you are lonely. Yes, but not too terribly unhappy because of that. Why not? Because of poetry? Yes. That is pretentiousness.

Listen to this piece they are piping in now, it is by Mozart. It’s okay. I really don’t understand classical music. Me neither. But see how much beauty his soul could create. Soul! Where are you going with this metaphysical talk? Also I must tell you I am quite simple and I don’t really read books. I am fenced in by books. Besides what are you doing in a bookstore if you don’t read? I came to buy a CD. You are lonely. No I am not, not when I am reading a book. What were you reading last night to sleep? Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. Was it good? Yes, his long lists were like flamenco guitar riffs. Tell me one.

I don’t remember one fully now except the ending of one, roughly. Tell me…And shoot bolts of lighting into her cunt. He is talking about wanting to have sex with some woman. Who was this woman? Some muse perhaps? No, I think she was a whore he picked up in a Paris café. Men are animals because they don’t change after fucking. That is a cliché. Clichés are so because they are true. You should wear spectacles with a smaller frame. What is wrong with these? I like them; they give me larger vision when I have to squint at people. People? You mean women in bookstores? Yes. Women.

You have nice eyes. Thank you. You don’t know how to take compliments without depreciating them? How I did do that! Because I could read that from your face. And because you have been talking with me for the last half hour and haven’t said something nice to me. I notice everything but I don’t think all that noticed should be put into words, talk or writing. What did you first notice about me? You have parrot green eyes. Parrot! That is a bad adjective? No, but certainly not what I see when I look at myself in the mirror. Actually I am not sure if I would now call them parrot green either.

Are you depreciating a compliment again? I don’t know how to pay a really good one, I am handicapped. You are a poet. Yes, who tends to make up things. That was poetic. A flock of parrots whirling in the sky, screeching. Do my eyes screech? Yes, in a way they do for they seem to demand something. What? Words perhaps? Or even affection? I must tell you I am cold, I have become an animal. What kind of an animal are you? Some inconspicuous animal, whose shining eyes you see on the side of a dark highway as you zoom by.

So you don’t know yourself. Yes and no. I have a set of rules, which imprison me. But I am not even sure what those rules are. What do you mean rules? Limitations is perhaps a more accurate word for them. What limitations? I can’t romance you right now for example. Why would you want to do that? Because I want to shoot bolts of lighting on those large blank pages, orgiastic poems for you. Are you talking about masturbation? Yes, perhaps writing too is like masturbation, one does mysterious things to get out of despair and reach transcendence. I suppose I am waiting for myself to arrive.