They told me
there would be empty chairs. I believed them.
Empty chairs always honest companions.
They never ask for encores.
They never wait by the merch table
pretending not to look. I rehearsed
for absence. Then I opened the door
and there you were, a room with no room left,
people leaning against walls,
breathing each other’s weather,
holding programs
like passports
to some country
I thought quietly disappeared.

It felt improbable,
like finding your childhood turtle
waiting outside the grocery store.

The same songs,
the piano still slightly out of tune,
my hands no wiser. Only the arithmetic changed.

Afterward
I carried the applause home
like a kid carries
a shell from the beach,

lifting it now and then
to my ear,

half expecting
to discover
it belonged
to someone else.