That Instant

standing inside a place of commerce, waiting in line for what you need to purchase to keep your spaceship afloat and thinking about the sharpest loop around the sun to dock it at your orbital station, you overhear conversation and consume and catalog and diagram and highlight and bullet point them, wishing they understood what you were doing so that you could feel some sort of guilt and heat of the perverse window watcher instead of feeling wreaking anxious havoc as though if you tilted your head 29 degrees either way, a jeweler or museum caterer's tome of notes, a pair of bifocals, a monocle, a steam eye piece, a taxidermist's blade, or a lens for reading fine print,will not clatter to the plastic tile floor and rattle until it settles flat.