I like your shoes,
I might have said.
Colourful, new, exciting.
Unlike everything else
I know about you.

Physically you repulse me,
I could have revealed.
And it weakens me
and my heart
to think that if it weren’t you
it would have been someone equally vile.

Sexually
and geographically
I am frustrated.
And you
are the final straw. But
“Excuse me”, I said,
instead of so much bile,
“This is my stop. Thank you.”

For it doesn’t do
to pick fights with strangers.