wednesday afternoon

i spent the evening prior locked in a struggle with you on the phone. you're very good at keeping your emotions ambiguous; if i had known that you were simply angry or uninterested, i would have set the receiver down and gone about my night. it would have smarted, it would sit there on my frontal lobe or deep in the trench below my heart for a good twelve to twenty-four hours. but i would know definitively, which is better than what i ended up getting.

you called me first, remember? that would indicate to me that it was worth your effort, that the thought crossed your mind. how you found my number i'm not sure but it's probably not some great mystery of the century. it was probably jp or william who did the legwork for you. it could even have been mary, but this is all speculation because i know nothing about your life now, who you keep up with and who you talk to on sundays, catching up about each other's weeks.

you would give me a piece of information here and there: you work for an autistic support center. you answer phones. you've an apartment with a young lady in nursing school, lots of windows, lots of light. you moved here last month, it's hotter than you thought it would be. anything else i asked, to try to fill in the gaps, to color in the stark black and white outlines, and you merely sighed. i haven't heard that sigh in twelve years. it is like a large copper pot of water shining in the afternoon sun. it's vast and holds so much and i want to stick my head in it and drown myself.

finally we agreed. i'll leave work early tomorrow. we'll meet near your place. 67th and park. i took the subway, loosening my collar as kids in doo-rags marched up and down the car hawking m&ms. when i got to the corner, there you were in a gray dress, a beam of sunlight slicing between the giant walls of the avenue and framing you in a parallelogram of fire. it fit quite nicely.

whatever thoughts i had of wringing our hands together in a diner off madison were dashed when we stepped into the chase atm. you are always fleeting. nothing has changed. and so as you held your head so impossibly high, as always, and the sun hit your golden curls in the gaps of the cross-streets, i knew this was all a waste. when the obese girl with the pony tail walked beside us towards the crosswalk i even mouthed a come-on to her, i was so frustrated, so desperate for any emotional acclaim.

i rode the train back to work and in minutes the machine and i were gone. back in the present i realized i hadn't even noticed the differences around us. i was only focused on your walk--graceful, carefree, always a few steps ahead of me.