J·S
It was over when you said you liked Hemingway and Woody Allen
at your four-story townhouse in the Village. And I sat there
feeling too broke for delivery Chinese, hating both those men.
And why had I bothered to fall for you over time, and not
get this conversation out of the way, first date in a dark bar?
I guess I was eager to get along and now I stared into the face
of a tidal wave and couldn’t say, Oh, well, I like the idea of surfing.
One dawn we woke, twin beds pushed together.
We had dreamt of us on a riverbank,
drawing with ink on parchment, a few feet apart,
to charm one another by the rising tide.
We laid the pages so they could dry.
Why did you bother making an effort, on return from the Cape,
saying, Hey I can’t wait to see you? You thought
you’d try, you said. You said a lot of things, like,
I’m crazy about you, can we stay together?
And I said, Okay.
By month three, you heard me say I hate you
In your bed when I hadn’t, and I love you in my bed
when I hadn’t, and those
stacked the deck against me.
I heard a dumb radio song in month eight and realized my life
was a dumb new radio song,
and we’d broken up ages ago.
The tide must have risen by now.
We wake in the dawn for a job, two-faced and
cursing the present, and busted in two
we flow ahead.
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