Would you like me to tell you
the things that I did
on the weekend, or Tuesday, or anything at all?
Do you not even care? We sat down,
and I opened with: “Tell me, what’s new
(since I guess it’s bad manners to talk of one’s self)?”
You told me: “Not much.” Then you went on in depth:
“I went to the movies and saw this one film.”
(So that’s why no one answered when I texted you that night!)
I sipped at my coffee.
I looked out the window.
The movie you watched—you said it was boring;
and then you described it in detail to me.
(Did you think that I wanted to be bored?
Did you think that I come
to these coffee shops with you
to hear of the boring things that you did?
Not at all.)
You got up
and excused yourself to the restroom.
It was then that I noticed the painting behind your chair:
it was very beautiful.
My mind went on walkabout. Last time we came here
we brought two or three other people with us,
and of course you kept talking, your
chit-chat and jokey-jokey small talk, putting everyone
at ease. “Time to go yet?” I asked, after maybe an hour.
“We just got here,” you said.
I went crazy that night. There are
two hundred ninety-two bricks in that fireplace there;
I know because I counted them.
I would have named them also, but—dearest mercy!—
the coffee shop closed at eleven.
You came back from the restroom
and obscured that beautiful painting again.
(You know what I don’t like? Your makeup these days.
Your lips look like pieces of some kind of wax.
Your cheeks are like plaster—uncannily smooth.
Your whole appearance is a lie and it could never be true.
Why are you doing this to yourself?
Don’t let the rest of the world judge your beauty.
Peel off the paint; show your natural shine.)
You went on:
“After the movie I worked for a while, then listened to music.”
(No I don’t think you did. We’ve discussed all of this before.
I know all about how you turn on the music
and leave it to play in the background. You hear it
but really, you don’t understand.)
You went on:
“My mother and I played some Scrabble on Tuesday.”
That reminds me—the time we played Scrabble,
back then, that time it was raining?
We played words like aqueous and syzygy and stuff from
biology textbooks and names from Dickens novels.
The rain was chilly that day, but we didn’t even care.
We walked in the park, and came back
and made chocolate—the right way, on the stovetop—
and made a big fire in the hearth and sat next to it.
And your two little sisters:
“Katya and I are fiery spirits
and we can speak the same language as the stars.”
So I ask you how they are doing.
“They’re alright,” you say.
That’s all you say.
And after,
the sky was full dark
and I walked up the hill
and turned around and I saw the city lights,
winking, all colors of yellow and tawny white
and red and green
and I was weeping.
I don’t know why. Lately, for no apparent reason,
I’ve found myself weeping. Nobody has ever
caught me doing it. It’s very quiet.
But could I even tell you this anymore?
Are we even that close?
What if you used that secret to hurt me—
joked about it, or whatever?
Do you remember
that time we sat under the bridge
and just looked at each other’s faces?
Why don’t we do things like that anymore?
Why did you have to change?
2004 / 2023