A Cage To Hold My Dreams
Roneo And Juliette
For years afterwards, I kept going back
to the photocopy machine
where I first saw her, hoping that
she would be there, with her enticing smile
and dimples and thin arms and small-cup
bra visible through her sweater.
She said I could go first because I had
only three pages to copy and
her bulky document would take all morning.
Above her cute breasts was a name-tag
with the single word 'Juliette'.
I wanted the machine to break, to jam,
to go berserk, so that I could waste time
with her, start a conversation,
ask which department she came from,
and perhaps persuade her to meet me
in the car-park after work.
I wanted to know if she had a boy-friend,
or went swimming, or lived with her parents,
or preferred dogs to cats,
or played the piano, or wore anything in bed.
A dozen questions formed an orderly
queue on the edge of my tongue.
But the Roneo worked fine, my job was
done in seconds, others were waiting,
so I just thanked her for letting me go first.
I left her bending down to place her
document in the handler. Me and my three
silly pages were already history
Someone explained to me afterwards
that Juliette was a temp hired for the day.
All this happened
when she and I and God were young,
but I remember that morning clearly
and wonder what kind of life she had.
