The room

I saw it coming even while you were still speaking, because your voice had already begun to slip from the room, arranging your departure quietly of one unwilling to seem unkind, and you said you had somewhere to be as if that were an accident and not a decision, and I still believed that listening might keep someone here, and all the while the air thickened and the room grew too full, and suddenly I was too much inside it, and it felt to me as if I were earnest and it felt slightly embarrassing to feel things aloud, and I understood then that I could not turn my heart off as you could, that I would remain with the words, the attention, with the longing after we disappear and I said everything then that I still liked you, and so did you, that perhaps this was a meaning worth holding, leaving gently as we say “next time” as visitors, and that talk soon which never came, and I was still listening, and perhaps you felt yourself a weight around my neck and that was reason enough to leave, and I remained there, breathing, felt the slow scraping of chairs, the ordinary world pressing on, and wondering, are you leaving so soon????? Soon??? Leaving.