Barista

They loved the heart-shaped leaves we poured, which bled
when they first sipped, then blew on, a steaming latte;
who parted our morning crowd and, at its head,
frowned as if to hide their A-list beauty.

They walked in after late nights on the set
and, caps pulled low, accepted the double takes
whose tiny grapplings twisted into a net,
which then hauled tight as everyone snuck peeks;

as they accepted, too, the buzzing path
of their good looks through the gene pool’s hand-picked cherry—
dim river views; torn litter spun in drafts
becoming, as they joined us, bright with story.

Painted with grunge, the set awaiting them
drained the flowering rent-stink from our sublets.
Between our four and their three-sided room
baskets of spangles darted through white credits.

What if their chance appearances were planned?
Preparing to shoot a sidewalk bump and meet,
they stopped the traffic just by leaning, tanned
and smiling, from a trailer in the street.

With white stencils, they traced their characters
in soft light bounced off boards behind each shot
and then stepped from that slurry, as cellophaned years
reeled in the shining panels of the plot

and glowed in full-page ads: Arms linked, they crossed
a burnt field toward a Rolls under a palm,
biting their lips as a squad car muscled past
dragging a dust-wrapped insert from the film.

Early one morning, as we rolled up the grille,
silk leaves, hung overnight, dipped near the door,
unseasonably green, as was the trail
of daylight picking through the leaf-changed air.

Later, hemmed by that shadow, posing fans
flashed peace signs to the deconstructed set.
Held eye level, the blue shim of their phones
pennied their moment on the internet

as, moving quickly over uneven mats,
we poured and tilted white rosettes into cups
and tore off receipts; the debits dropped like gates
tiled by the grids of navigation apps.

And though their handlers, recently of the Ivy League,
took their measure of our little shop at once,
they still, for all their much-declared fatigue,
attended, just as we did, to small wants.

In the last scene they shot nearby, they burst from
opposing doors with bags of groceries
moments apart, then ducked into a hansom
whose fringe danced as the cab sank to its knees
 
and they met up inside, still fresh-eyed,
still half-committed to a life whose trim,
suggested by their past, but never tried,
backed the green fold of days we spent on them;

a life that bore with ours faint streaks of cloud
tipping shadow on the billboards’ brave designs
that promised us their world, as the weeks rolled
backward from the day we first read our lines.

Read more from Issue 22.2.