Back—in that place
before the aftertaste
plotted its daring dislocation
from the taste,
before the sun hung
hemoglobin-red
at the end of an anniversary
date's unsympathetic tether;
back in the old apartment,
the one with the stucco
walls, the one above the Starbucks;
back before the utterance's disintegration
into its inexorable silent answer
and Paul Simon's (incongruous)
hit song about the sound of that;
there in the secret lookout place
where you'd hide, bare-kneed, still,
and breathless, behind the orange drapes,
to watch them as they first envisioned
the impressive dam they'd build
against the fat muddy middle
finger-shaped river of their grief—
that's the only
place where you could travel
to catch—and tenderly
caress—that gently curving little c,
that very first malignant letter
of their current condition.
