Merciel

She rambles
about her brunch with her boyfriend,
where an audience of eyes rolled
to their chalkboard-scratching howls.
I nod nonchalantly
with ears content
with the hum of the A/C
and eyes hungrily searching
for a diversion to break
her rubber band bind on me,
but everybody walks through
as though we’re ghosts.
When the building’s silent,
save for her predictable and perpetual bile,
I feign interest in the browning plants,
because to look at her spotty face, as rank
as the dissonance her mouth excretes,
will compel me to debate
whether the debt of murder
is a better bargain than this.