I rarely - if ever - construct a poem at a computer. For whatever reason, when I decide I want to sit down and write a poem, I always look around for a pencil and my notebook. Even if I've been sitting at my computer for a while, as soon as I want to work on a poem, I almost instinctively leave it for a piece of paper.

He was never late, ever. Every Saturday at precisely two o’clock we met without fail. But today, on the very day that I needed him, he was sixteen minutes late. Sixteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds to be exact.

I slumped a little in the booth, then straightened and began typing in a nearly empty document.

Twenty-three year-old Tiana Black waited patiently—

I hit the backspace button, deleting the last word.