Cognitive Blur #1: Librarian Bond Girl

One of the women working at our library
is taller in my mind than when we stand talking.
In my mind she’s something like a Bond Girl walking
toward me, her eye-line level with mine and wary,

like all Bond Girls, of the schemes she’ll have to parry,
dismissive, like all Bond Girls, of the rubes gawking,
thinking, like all Bond Girls, a soft Stephen Hawking
but female, mobile, not hooked to machinery.

But here in real life—I mean here outside my mind—
I think I’m something like an inch taller than her.
The other Bond Girl things, though, are still going on

but when we talk my eye-line is tipped down I find.
In my mind and out, I love the cognitive blur
of this librarian Bond Girl phenomenon.