Reading Cate

Listen to your story

..........Do each other’s hair
..........Have a drink or ten
..........Dance and laugh
..........Borrow your make-up
..........Giggle at nothing

May I tell you mine?

..........Till 4 A.M.
..........Show you the town I don’t know
..........Be your midnight confidant
..........Smoke more cigarettes than you
..........Here, have a brownie

We needn’t have bothered

..........Do each other’s nails
..........Yours are chipping
..........Mine would be too, were they painted
..........Is your hair that carelessly pinned on purpose,
..........or haphazardly lovely?

For they reflect and refract an image

..........Open your book
..........Swim inside,
..........read through the wake
..........of your Ink-stained typhoon
..........And share the audience burden

Equal to that before the glass

..........Have a drink or a hundred
..........Feed from the town that brought you
..........I’ll wear that lovely hair
..........When I be you,
..........in a year or ten,
..........And I’m inside your skin.

Friend like mirror,
be patient.