... (2021 - toss up)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InyT9Gyoz_o&ab_channel=MaxRichterVEVO

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And she looks at me,

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Standing, in the doorframe,

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My eyes upon my feet

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And my sole, right arm 

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Hanging 

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About the creases in my jeans.

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And she says to me:

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"How?"

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"How could you have known?"

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While the earnest desperation,

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Cracking, in her voice, in its tone,

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Is carried less by her cadence

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Than it is

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By the welling pools 

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That've sent to burning trenches

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Along the recesses of her cheeks.

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"I didn't." 

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I tell her.

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"I'd only just had a feeling," 

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"Been guessing,"

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"Really,"

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"And waiting."

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"For what?" 

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The question comes out

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Like a gasp, 

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Like the sucking of an asthmatic.

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"For something else to show it to you."

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"And for seeing it, to bring you home."

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There's silence, then,

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The kind of silence

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That proceeds realization.

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And I don't have to look

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To know 

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That as her expression sets to widening

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And the salt water dam, the ducts -

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So long 

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Held so tightly

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Between the corners of her eyes - 

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That as it breaks

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And her jaw sets

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And her teeth align -

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In the manner that they do

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When their owner's given to hoping

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That if they bite down hard enough

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The flood might somehow close -

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And as this happens, 

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And as I stare at the interlacing 

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Of the string within my boots,

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I know

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That whatever it was

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That she'd had to see -

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What ever it was

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That had shaken her, so deeply to her roots -

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Had caused, also, for something heavy,

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Something dark, and something deadly,

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To've finally 

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Fallen loose.

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