How It Doesn’t Happen

This is how it doesn’t happen:
you’re on a train from London to Paris
and a woman in red sits down
across from you.  No need for talk,
the distance exactly what you both need
on this fog-chilled morning,
the 70-year-old scent of siege still in the air,
the sunrise damp thick in your overcoat.

This is how it doesn’t happen, how all you do
is offer her a paper-thin wafer of chocolate,
bittersweet as monochrome,
how nothing happens,
how the train churns on to Paris,
how in Paris you leave the compartment,
walk your separate ways,
how the sharp smell of grease is perfect,
how the steam is absolutely perfect.

That is how it doesn’t happen.