August 15, 2017

They say, “Remember a time when…”
But I don’t want to.
They say, “Tell us about a memory you have of…”
And I say, No.

For what is memory but moldy meat,
The cold and crusted soup in an unwashed pot,
The greening scum in a dirty cup?

It’s the flowered wallpaper behind five coats of paint.

And yet…

The summer night in mid-August
When we left the theatre and walked down 46^th,
The air warm and gentle,
The jostling crowd indifferent and thick.
You took my hand and held it
For the first and last time.

We glided onto a sidewalk choked with tourists
Into a din of drunken shrieks and high-pitched laughter.
We swam against the current of the multitudes,
As they swept past us like fat fishes,
The epileptic pulse of billboard lights
Pummeling us from above,
Like a thousand fluorescent suns.

You slowed and then stopped,
My hand still in yours.
I turned around to see
Your face covered in a moving mosaic of colors.
You asked, Can I kiss you?
And before I could answer, you did.

Your kiss hungry and open,
Your mouth as soft as buttercream,
I whispered a startled “oh,”
As you started to pull away
And then you kissed me again.

Lifted by a heavenly danger,
We walked on without words,
Like two bandits, running in slow motion
Across a forbidden Eden,
Blind to the crumbling cliff edge ahead.

You are the past I long to let go of,
The memory I’d pay to forget.
The beast I buried in an unmarked grave,
The dirt packed down hard.

And yet…

Even now
There is only your face
Covered in rainbows,
Your eyes inside of mine,
And the ever-present, unfortunate truth;

We were made but not meant
to kiss each other,
And to kiss each other again.