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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It felt improbable,
like finding your childhood turtle
waiting outside the grocery store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The same songs,
the piano still slightly out of tune,
my hands no wiser. Only the arithmetic changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Afterward
I carried the applause home
like a kid carries
a shell from the beach,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
lifting it now and then
to my ear,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
half expecting
to discover
it belonged
to someone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
They told methere would be empty chairs. I believed them.Empty chairs always honest companions.They never ask for encores.They never wait by the merch tablepretending not to look. I rehearsedfor absence. […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"Layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[902],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-rockbob","post-9622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}