Amnesia
I could paint this: In our third floor Brownstone
flat, the cup I used: china mug from Woolworth,
small flowers encircling, handle a ring
for a finger, its no-color bird shell. l feel
at this distance how it filled my hands, heavy
with coffee, black, as I drank it then—and how
it shattered years later in the outskirts, slipping
to the counter, to marble, in the house I live in
with the one I married.
I remember even the way the light
billowed through the bay window on clear
afternoons.Details of that time unfold from
memory’s datebook. Self-contained on Sixth
Avenue, in sunlight after subway, keying two
locks in the tiled foyer. Your voice, Hi
Babe, before I see you. The raw red peppers
you find so sweet.
Then there’s the mist of your showers, scent
of palmolive, and of course your howling
for the hell of it, catching echo in real
time. But us, what we were, we must have
been. Five years of tangling legs, palms,
fire and spit. I make words, kites
in a sky of thought, to see
my own life, forgotten in the moment
of creation.