June 4, 2020

Memories of You

          You shaved at your kitchen sink and showered in a closet in your bedroom.
          You looked so good in a robin's egg blue dress shirt that I would steal glimpses of you in all those second-hand book shops and think—long before it was legalmy husband.
          Whatever happened to those paper umbrellas you had on the ceiling lights?
          In the cool spring evenings you played Gershwin, and I stared out the window at the old iron gates across Hanover Street.
          I had no idea where they werewhere I wasin that tiny apartment with the emerald green wooden wheelbarrow next to the toilet. The steps to your door—a short flight, then a long, and then a narrow passageway I forgetturned so many times I lost my bearings.
          Which gave those long Boston weekends their quality of fantasy. The little shops in the North End that sold just one thing. The tiny restaurants with their fronts open to the street, only a handful of tables inside. Walking to Cambridge Saturday morning after sex and raisin toast and more sex.
          But I cried one Sunday night when it was time to catch the trainthe kind of tears that come like a bloody nose, or jury duty—no warning. I just started to cry into the kitchen wall, as if turning to sneeze or take a book off a shelf.
          I didn't want to leave the little rooms with the carousel horse and the glass towel bars that made a prism of the window light and the arguments in Italian coming up from the streetthe plaster chest with the Mardi Gras beads, or the plastic toilet filled with change.
          Remember your houndstooth phase?
          That T-shirt you left didn't keep your scent long enough. 
          One time my phone bill was over $200. You'd fall asleep and I had to wake you up to hang up. Then I'd smoke for several more hours, alone.
          It all came to a head our first Easter—your mania to make a basket to send to Hans. I still have the little wooden chicks in a basket you gave me, a powerful token. The stores with the neon signs sold bread with pink and turquoise eggs on top, windows full of marzipan, and little ricotta pies that made my jeans too tight, 30 years ago. 
          My boss said: Do you know how lucky you are?
          You were like color TV.
          Memories of you!
          

4 comments:

Unknown said...

LOVE. <3

Bev. Rodgers said...

Just lovely. My heart hurts.

SevenWinters said...

Beautiful.

SevenWinters said...
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