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"pretty woman with the iced coffee"

pretty woman with the iced coffee,
i don’t think i’ll ever know your name
but i crave to sip from your plastic cup,
dewy with cold caffeinated condensation
and filled with everything i could know about you.

my craving will die unsatisfied
that is, if it dies at all.
by inking your name on this page
and i dooming my heart to forever bleed
your image into my vision?

i could have chosen to forget my cowardice,
my inability to reach out and wrap my fingers
in the leather of your jacket, your blonde hair,
maybe one day, your face
perfectly sculpted by whatever god smiles on me.

but i chose to let you go
and keep your memory instead.
this was a cruelty i gave myself.
maybe your rough, gorgeous voice made me afraid
that my flustered stuttering wouldn’t harmonize.

we wouldn’t have to harmonize.
imperfections would make the song sweeter,
but i suppose i was terrified
you’d sneer at the first note.
would you?

it really doesn’t matter.
even if our paths cross again
i don’t think i’d ever reach to weave them together.
i’m not a very good seamstress.
i’d let you down.

maybe it’s best i’m a coward.
maybe we would have let each other down.
but i don’t think you would have ever broken my heart,
however tangled that story might’ve been.

oh, isn’t that the luxury of this?
all you were was a
pretty woman with an iced coffee

and i could write about you
for the rest of my life.

(would you let me buy you a coffee sometime?)