There was something.
There was something in that bombastic laugh
that set a tingle up my spine,
something not quite right that climbed out from behind your eyes,
incised the benefit of the doubt.
There was something that kept me holding back
long before your strange attack.
Perhaps my intuition,
just knew it wasn’t safe to trust?
I didn’t mean to do it.
The clerk was trying to teach me to do something for myself
but I had neither time nor inclination.
I just wanted a book, and if the one I had requested from the other campus wasn’t there,
it didn’t matter where it was in the system
or whether it was coming.
Today I could pick it up, not tomorrow or later.
It wasn’t here, so I just wanted to sign out the book in my hand.
When she tried to explain what I should do to trace the path of the missing book
explain the complex library system, invite me to log into a computer off to the side,
I gave her the look.
I didn’t mean to, but I did.
She froze and her sentence stuttered to a halt,
eyes gaping at me.
She passed my book over the scanner, gulping.
I apologized for not being teachable.
I don’t know where I developed the look,
I don’t realize I’m doing it until I see the reaction.
I don’t know what I’m doing precisely
that conveys such intense disinterest and disapproval
but it does.
At least I didn’t have to sit for ten minutes
for a lecture and computer consultation, like she wanted.
Three minutes in the university library was long enough
when I am hobbling with a cane
and irritated with accessibility.
Shawn L. Bird 