strand

Last night, a single strand of her hair
surfaced on my pillow. All day, on the boat,
as I tried righting myself on waterskis, and failing,
I had begun to convince myself
that whatever momentum that had carried us all year
was beginning to sputter and topple.
I gripped the rope as if my life
depended on it, and still, it flew out of my hands.
On deck she was as beautiful as ever. It was not hard
to keep falling in love. When she took to the wakeboard,
her skin gleaming in the Delta sun,
it was almost heartbreaking how easy it looked.
She was floating. She was an angel.
I wanted to dive in after her like a dolphin, follow her trail.
I couldn't.
After all of my attempts to rise above the surface,
I was shivering wildly, my grip
reddened and sore. I climbed into my towel and stayed there,
head down, legs goose-pimpled. She rubbed my back
as if I were a child.
I was.
I told myself it would always be like this,
me trying to hold on to such an unwieldy ride, and she
already aloft and steady, eyes pinching the horizon.
When I came home, I thought,
Maybe this is the beginning of the end, and I began
the terrible act of curling back inside myself,
reeling my heart back in, stowing my memories in the dark.

But no.
I pulled back the cover of my bed, and there it was.
A strand of her, a slim remainder,
a micron of her body resting squarely
where her head had been just last week,
as I lay against her on a Tuesday afternoon.
And I knew
that something of her was still with me,
singing me to sleep.

the larger conversation

It was not the man on 24th and Mission asking for change.
It was not the baby, sleeping angelic in her stroller.
It was not the trees, the sunshine, the cloudless perfect sky.
It was the coffee menu at Philz.

For the 20th time or the 1000th,
you might have ordered the small decaf French,
just like you always did,
medium cream, light sweet.
It had become a small habit, like taking your shoes off at the door,
flicking the day's mail on the kitchen counter,
shutting the drapes before bed.

You grow accustomed to things so easily,
turn them into a kind of lifeline to order and security and sanity.

You didn't even know what else was on the menu,
would call out to the barista in a voice not unlike
a robot, flat and meaningless.
You thought you sounded determined, certain, confident, hip,
but really, you were unimaginative, plain, paper-thin.
Someone or something could topple you any second,
you knew that, so you clung to your small decaf French
because you were in the market for anything you could rely on,
that wouldn't destroy the slim grip you were keeping on everything.

And yet, today, without thinking
you uttered the words "Ethiopian," and the woman behind the counter
reached back into a different jar to gather up the beans.

It was a small thing, really, but you saw it
for its metaphor, for the larger conversation
you were beginning to have with yourself.
"Look up," is what you were saying.
"What else is there to see?"

close enough

Because the lighting had struck so suddenly.
Because you came back to the hotel exhausted from the wedding.
Because of the heat.
Because of the strip malls and airfields and the Burger King just off 179.
Because your lover was in another state, waiting for your call.
Because you had had half a glass of wine too many.
Because of the dress you wore, its plunging V.
Because your mother had told you you looked beautiful.
Because of the outline of ponderosa just past your headlights.
Because it was Sunday evening.
Because it was the middle of July.
Because you were 37.
Because you were exactly where you needed to be.

Whatever it was, you looked up, and the stars
looked close enough to touch.