Room

I move through a room with walls painted white
Where the women look right past me
To a room with walls painted red
Where passion has had its hour,
The women spent and the men spent
And words dispensed with thrift

To a room no more than a smoldering ruin
Where giant butterflies flutter
And a child, half-smiling through
The onslaught of her senses, sings
Listlessly, dragging her blood-drenched doll,

To a room where men and women eat the air
With knife and fork and ponder the concoctions
Of their restless minds.

In that room will you find me now.

May 2004