Should I mail it back to you?
After Mary Ruefle’s “Timberland”
Your green sweatshirt is on my body now; it is warm
enough for only a sweatshirt. Five hours have elapsed here
at this picnic table. We have fused, although
we’re steeped in debate. You want to end death. I want, someday,
a dwindling: light sleep and reading only books I want to read.
You assure me that there’s time to reconcile myself to eternity.
I alert you to the easy self-containment of these precious, idle hours.
A month earlier, no one knows where I am. His hair
is thick yet accommodating. I swipe your text away
before he notices; I am
some distant cousin of happy. My eyes catch the film
of fairy lights, a sweatshirt hanging on the coat tree,
a plate bearing indeterminate crust. You
materialize to fill a pair of boat shoes in the corner.
It is very late. I move the hair from his eyes and close my own.
Actually none of this has happened yet. I am on a bus to New Jersey,
telling you about my weekend plans.
Your hands are like mouths. I am learning that they speak more eloquently
than any mouth. When the bus lurches I fall into you. This is what
I am hurtling towards: you will help pack my father’s old apartment,
make tacos for my mother, check my heartbeat with your watch
and buy us plane tickets. I will miss the flight.
But now the bus has dropped us off. You are walking me to the subway,
hugging me goodbye. I am watching you, phased out
by the stair railing as I descend, getting out my phone to text you.
The future swells with hot tea, late nights, your hand
beneath my shoulder-blades. I know you will text back.
Your sweatshirt, since it touched my skin, already belongs to me.
