Coda

Maybe it was jet lag, maybe not,

but I was smoking in the kitchen: six,

barely, still dark: beyond the panes, a mix

of summer storm and autumn wind. I got

back to you; have I got you back? What

warmed me wasn't coffee, it was our

revivified combustion. In an hour,

gray morning, but I'd gone back to my spot

beside you, sleeping, where we'd stayed awake

past exhaustion, talking, after, through

the weeks apart, divergent times and faces.

I fell asleep, skin to warm skin, at daybreak.

Your breasts, thighs, shoulders, mouth, voice, are the places

I live, whether or not I live with you.

Fog hid the road. The wipers shoved back torrents

across the windshield. You, on knife-edge, kept

driving. Iva, in the back seat, wept

histrionically. The crosscurrents

shivered like heat-lightning into the parent's

shotgun seat. I shut up, inadept

at deflecting them. A Buick crept

ahead at twenty-five an hour. "Why aren't

we passing him? My Coke spilled. The seat's wet.

You guys keep whispering so I can't hear."

"Sit in the front with us, then."

"No! I'll get

too hot. Is the fan on? What time is it?

What time will it be when we get there?"

Time to be somewhere else than where we are.

"What do we have? I guess we still don't know."

I was afraid to say, you made me feel

my sectioned heart, quiescent loins, and spill

past boundaries the way blackberry-brambles grow

up those tenacious hills I left for you.

Their gritty fruit's ripe now, but oceans still

separate us, waves opaque as oatmeal,

miles of fog roiling between your pillow

and mine while you say your best: sometimes, she's where

your compass points, despite you, though a meal

with me, or talk, is good . . . Where our starfire

translated depths, low fog won't let you steer

by sight. The needle fingers one desire,

and no other direction can compel.

If no other direction can compel

me upward from the dark-before-the-dawn

descending spiral, I drop like a stone

flung into some scummed-over stagnant well.

The same momentum with which once we fell

across each other's skies, meteors drawn

by lodestones taproots clutched in unmapped ground

propels me toward some amphibious hell

where kissing's finished, and I tell, tell, tell

reasons as thick and sticky as frogspawn:

had I done this, that wouldn't have come undone.

The wolf of wolf's hour cried at once too often

picks out enfeebled stragglers by the smell

of pond scum drying on them in the sun.

I miss you more than when I was in France

and thought I'd soon be done with missing you.

I miss what we'd have made past making do,

haft meshing weft as autumn days advance,

transliterating variegated strands

of silk, hemp, ribbon, flax, into some new

texture. I missed out on misconstrued

misgivings; did I miss my cue; boat? Chanc-

es are, the answer's missing too. At risk

again, sleep and digestion, while I seize on

pricklier strands, crushed to exude the reason

I can't expect you'll ring up from your desk,

calling me Emer, like Cuchulain's queen,

to say, we need bread and some salad greens.

On your birthday, I reread Meredith,

whose life's mean truths inform, tonight, his text

so generously framed. There'll be the next

night, and the next, cold gaps. I'd have been with

you now, lover and friend, across the width

of some candle-lit table as we mixed

habit and hope in toasts. Instead, perplexed

by separation like a monolith

bulked in the rooms and hours I thought would be

ours, I practice insensibility.

We crossed four miles, three thousand. You diminish

now, on a fogged horizon, far away.

Your twenty-fifth was our first class Tuesday

—will one year bracket us from start to finish?

Will one year bracket us from start to finish,

who, in an evening's gallant banter, made

plans for new voyages to span decades

of love and work around a world we'd win? Wish

was overgrown with fears; voyages vanish

with empty wine bottles and summer's paid

bills. Lengthens the legendary blade

between us: silence; hope I hope to banish;

doubt, till I almost doubt what happened, did.

Chicken from Zabar's warms, and frozen spinach

simmers, while Iva writes a school essay:

"Both Sides: Everything has an opposite . . ."

sucking her inky fingers and her braid,

and I read Meredith, on your birthday.

"Why did Ray leave her pipe tobacco here

in the fridge?" Iva asks me while we're

rummaging for mustard and soy sauce

to mix with wine and baste the lamb. "Because

cold keeps it fresh." That isn't what she means,

we both know. I've explained, there were no scenes

or fights, really. We needed time to clear

the air, and think. What she was asking, was,

"Why did Ray leave

her stuff if she's not coming back?" She leans

to extremes, as I might well. String beans

to be sautéed with garlic; then I'll toss

the salad; then we'll eat. (Like menopause

it comes in flashes, more or less severe:

why did you leave?)

"Now that you know you can, the city's full

of girls—just notice them! It's not like pull-

ing teeth to flirt," she said, "or make a date."

It's quite like pulling teeth to masturbate

(I didn't say), and so I don't. My nice

dreams are worse than nightmares. As my eyes

open, I know I am; that instant, feel

you with me, on me, in me, and you're not.

Now that you know

you don't know, fantasies are more like lies.

They don't fit when I try them on for size.

I guess I can, but can't imagine what

I'd do, with whom, tonight. It's much too late

or soon, so what's yours stays yours. It has until

now. That, you know.

Who would divorce her lover with a phone

call? You did. Like that, it's finished, done—

or is for you. I'm left with closets of

grief (you moved out your things next day). I love

you. I want to make the phone call this

time, say, pack your axe, cab uptown, kiss

me, lots. I'll run a bubble bath; we'll sing

in the tub. We worked for love, loved it. Don't sling

that out with Friday's beer cans, or file-card it

in a drawer of anecdotes: "My Last

Six Girlfriends: How a Girl Acquires a Past."

I've got "What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted"

run on a loop, unwanted leitmotif.

Lust, light, love, life all tumbled into grief.

You closed us off like a parenthesis

and left me knowing just enough to miss.

"Anyone who (I did) ran down Broadway

screaming, or dropped in Bryant Park in a faint

similarly provoked, will sniff a taint

of self-aggrandizement in the assured way

you say: so be it; then she cut the cord; hey,

the young are like that. Put yourself on main-

tenance, stoically, without more complaint?

Grown-ups, at least, will not rush to applaud. They

won't believe you." And he downed his Negroni.

Who wants to know how loss and sorrow hit

me daily in the chest, how like a stone

this bread tastes? Even though lunch is on me,

he doesn't. Home alone is home, alone.

(I'd reach for Nightwood, but she "borrowed" it.)

Did you love well what very soon you left?

Come home and take me in your arms and take

away this stomach ache, headache, heartache.

Never so full, I never was bereft

so utterly. The winter evenings drift

dark to the window. Not one word will make

you, where you are, turn in your day, or wake

from your night toward me. The only gift

I got to keep or give is what I've cried,

floodgates let down to mourning for the dead

chances, for the end of being young,

for everyone I loved who really died.

I drank our one year out in brine instead

of honey from the seasons of your tongue.