Lonely Note

I am hiding out at Starbucks
just across from my apartment,
hiding out from people.

Jazz speakers above mix
with smoke and empty conversation,
rinse over me to create

a strange sort of quiet
isolation and lets me drown
in a paper mug almost empty,

but still there is one vibration,
thirty million times a second
that I can just make out.

It is the lonely note,
timbred in absence,
and sometimes I wonder

when I am hiding out at Starbucks,
if there isn't someone else
listening for the lonely note

that might come to my table
with a sorrowful smile
and pluck another string.