What I Remember About You

You lived in a warehouse space you shared with your roommate,
a grad student of comparative lit, a woman you probably
secretly longed for who went by her middle name and practiced
safe sex. You had a Jimmy Stewart voice, and Jimmy Stewart’s
height: oddly enough, your name was Jim. You told me
not to flush the toilet because you and your roommate
believed in conserving resources. And besides, flushing was so
American, reactionary, a bourgeois fetish. I wrote you
a letter you said you never received, so I printed a duplicate
and gave it to you that night in person. That night you read the letter,
I watched your face as you read. I think you were from Florida. The next day I called you
three times, because
I forgot my contact lenses in your bathroom,
on the tank of your unflushed toilet.
I’m not your puppy dog, you said to me, when I came to get my lenses. Because I called
three times, because I left
three messages. I asserted my innocence: I didn’t think you were my puppy dog.
But I knew: that wasn’t really what you accused me of. I remember your feet,
black lace-up boots. I was seven
years older than you; you said we were of different generations. I didn’t correct
your math because I knew what you meant: you like to sleep with your friends, all
of them. To me, a friend is someone I don’t have to sleep with. Dennis,
I said to my friend, I’m in trouble. We went to the Plaza and ordered cheeseburgers.
I cried and told him everything that happened, how you slammed my car door
and said Thanks for the ride. I remember your wrists, angular
and bony, the pale flesh of your unscarred inner forearm. Sometimes I drive
down the street where you lived but now all the buildings
look the same, present a stony, unified front. It’s like what I once saw
was never there at all. It’s like it never happened now, the feverish hope, you opening
me like an envelope and reading every line.

Karen Wurl