Reflections Upon Meeting an Ex-Lover
His hair is short and clean.
He smokes filters now.
Missing the other,
she breathes in this loss,
orders another vodka,
and inquires after his mother.
“She’d always hoped, you know…”
Pursed and brittle, she nods, eyes closed
and draws one hand slowly across her forehead.
Lifting the thin cool glass, she holds cold liquid in her mouth,
and hears him shift forward against gravity
and poor lighting
to study the paper menu placemat.
She always liked it here,
the gold-toned kerosene candles
lit redundantly in the center of most tables,
plastic geraniums straining red and aged from wall sconces and
the awkward script of a gratuitous neon promise: “Always Open.”
She tries not to rest her forearms on the table.
The waitress, overfriendly, with cotton candy hair
and whom she ought to remember,
asks how they’ve been. Her plastic name tag reads: Clarissa.
Chatting easily, the waitress reminds them of the last time—
when they sat at the front of the restaurant,
taking their regular booth by the window,
drinking coffee and watching rain turn to snow.
(She doesn’t remember any of this, or whether they ever had a favorite booth;
still, she takes it in, grateful for any simple fiction.)
As she rests her eyes on Clarissa’s worn white uniform,
enjoying the weight and shadow of her own lashes,
she thinks of nurses’ quiet shoes, her mother’s cake batter and that long ago snow.
She imagines neglected cars, newspaper machines,
No Parking signs as glistening topiary, powdery and new.
The waitress tugs hard on her apron belt
as she recites “what’s special tonight” and shifts her weight.
It’s unclear whether she’s securing the apron or trying to escape it.
They both decide on the Special,
engage the customary banter about salad dressing and side dishes,
then trade glances when the waitress finally holsters her tablet and disappears.
He’s telling stories of an unfettered life,
the kinds of stories
particular to certain men,
stories overflowing with the poetry of landscapes, sex, poverty,
and the loneliness they seek.
His long hands, tapered and stained,
float and move just above the table,
fashioning every free ride, every joint, each hot shower and cold beer.
Among the roast beef, green beans and vodka
she sees the road, feels his lovers, and tastes long cold pulls from moist dusty bottles.
Just beneath the table
she draws a napkin between the first and second fingers of her left hand,
looping it repeatedly as one might the strands of a child’s hair.
Thankful for an inviting texture, and unaccustomed to seeing his eyes,
she searches the room for the waitress and
worries over their drink order.
He smiles,
and she’s sure she misremembers.
Aware of humming heavy light upon her,
hovering and collecting around her eyes and mouth,
she asks why he’s back in town.
“It was always you,” she hears
and thinks, more likely, it was never her.
Never the aches, logistics, bounced checks and worried nights, impossible mornings…
Rather, it was an idea that drew him,
the same idea boys had her entire life.
That she was safe, not for them, but for herself.
That sheltered in her own good sense and fine bone structure,
she had no need of too much care, too attentive a companion.
That, as she did herself no harm, she was indifferent to their occasional cruelties,
their solitary seeking and returning.
Surely, such boys imagined, she heard the poetry composed in her name far from home.
Meeting his eyes, she waits.
Later, on the long drive home she thinks of a boy who once sang Neil Young
and gave her rides.
Watching dashes of white paint scroll past,
the road moving and her car standing still,
she smiles with the memory of that boy’s voice,
his shy kindnesses, his crush.
The year before, a friend from that time called to say the boy had died.
Something about an accident and it seemed she should know.
Weeping softly in the warm dark of her own car,
she feels the loss for the first time,
sings a little louder
and drives on.
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