One Person Playing a Silent Scene

That’s a handsome bit of melancholy,
He said, Although it does risk self-pity.

He waited to see what she’d say to that,
In the peculiar suspense invented

By phone-texted conversation. Dot-dot.
While he waited, he wondered what he’d meant

When he had incorporated handsome.
Handsome how? Fine? Elegant? Masculine?

How could a melancholy emotion
Suggest any of those connotations?

He knew he had a tendency to link
Oddball adjective-noun combinations.

She didn’t answer him, but he began
To understand he’d meant he’d imagined

Some handsome and melancholy person
Expressing that opinion she’d sent him

And then had unconsciously elided
The person from the imaginary

Situation in which the person said
Such a handsome, melancholy thing,

Leaving behind a floating emotion
That seemed to risk being self-pitying.

That, too, was his thing—removing persons
From spoken settings, leaving only terms.

He thought of Stevens—Life is an affair
Of people, not things, but for me it’s been

The reverse, and that has been the problem.
He gave his phone a last glance at the screen.