Sestina

The look in her eyes told me all manner of things.
Lights were out and the wind moaned under the door.
I looked at the tabby in the corner to break her gaze.
Not again was my only lingering thought.
My chair creaked as I shifted my weight
and for a brief moment I forgot the world.

And in the next moment she didn't crush my world.
She commented on the gravity of this thing,
how it was a decision that couldn't wait.
I willed somebody, anybody, to come through the door.
Maybe Jesus on a pegasus, I thought,
would divert her relentless gaze.

That gaze.
It began to make me unsteady as if I'd been whirled
around, stirring my gray matter and colliding my thoughts.
"Get me off of this thing!"
I screamed as I lunged for the door
but she hugged me and I was comforted by the weight.

The moment held its breath, waiting.
Her eyes closed on my shoulder but I still felt her gaze.
Inches from escape it was now eons to the door,
the floor stretching out like Pangea into the new world,
the globe on the floor depicting the whole thing
over an expanse of time that defies thought.

I realize the vacuum of the room has thawed.
Her grip on my torso still had weight
but the heaviness had gone out of the thing.
I no longer felt that gaze
and the globe with a bar inside it showed the correct world.
I didn't even notice the door.

Slowly gliding open on frictionless hinges. The door
that revealed a black hallway of thoughts
like blinking yellow eyes in a black, black forest world.
Waiting.
Affixing their eyes on us in a gaze
that dripped of starvation amongst the throngs.

And it was that gaze, from outside the door
that splintered my thoughts with a crushing weight
and stopped this thing, this woman, from leaving my room. My world.