In-flight note

Kitten, writes the mousy boy in his neat
fawn casuals sitting beside me on the flight,
neatly, I can't give up everything just like that.
Everything, how much was it? and just like what?
Did she cool it or walk out? loosen her hand from his tight
white-knuckled hand, or not meet him, just as he thought
You mean far too much to me. I can't forget
the four months we've known each other. No, he won't eat,
finally he pays – pale, careful, distraught –
for a beer, turns over the pad on the page he wrote
and sleeps a bit. Or dreams of his Sydney cat.
The pad cost one dollar twenty. He wakes to write
It's naive to think we could be just good fiends.
Pages and pages. And so the whole world ends.