Every poem below is an original written for this Happily Lover collection. The speakers and scenes are imagined.
When It Ends
-
The Last Ordinary Thing
You asked if we needed milk.
I said I’d check.
That was the last ordinary thing
before you said, Can we talk,
and the kitchen became a place
where something happened.I never did check.
Somewhere in that refrigerator
is the answer to a question
from a life I used to have. -
Kind
You were kind about it,
which was the worst part.
Anger would have given me something to hold,
a speech to rehearse on the drive home.
Instead you said you’d always care,
and you meant it,
and I had to thank you
for holding the door
while I walked out of my own life. -
Inventory
The lamp is yours. The rug was mine.
The blue bowl we bought on a whim
in a town whose name we argued over
the whole drive home:
we stand above it like two lawyers.
Take it, I say. You say, No, you.
In the end we leave it on the counter,
the only thing in the apartment
neither of us can bear to own. -
The Slow Goodbye
You used to save
the corner piece for me,
the one with too much frosting.Then you stopped asking
which night I’d be home.
We ate when we were hungry.
We finished different shows.I kept waiting for a scene
large enough to explain us:
a suitcase,
a sentence I could repeat.But when we finally talked,
you said you thought I knew.I had noticed everything.
I had not put it together. -
The Voicemail
I still have the voicemail
from the day you got lost
driving to my cousin’s wedding.
Forty-one seconds of you
saying left, no, right, no,
then laughing, then: Okay, I see it. I see you.I don’t play it.
I just like knowing
there’s a place where you’re still
on your way to me.
The Days After
-
Your Handwriting
There’s a list on the fridge in your handwriting:
eggs, batteries, that cheese you like.
I have bought all three.
I have bought them twice.
I can’t take it down.
It’s the last time anyone
wrote you like about me
and meant something small and sure. -
Muscle Memory
Good news happens
and my thumb is halfway to your name
before the rest of me remembers.I call my sister.
She cheers.
I tell the story properly,
with the funny part.Afterward,
there is still a call
I haven’t made. -
Three Mornings After
Monday: I wake up
on my side of the bed, still.
Polite to no one.Wednesday: your song plays
in the grocery store. I stand
holding a lemon.Sunday: I make plans
for one and keep them. The day
does not ask for you. -
What People Say
Plenty of fish. I don’t want fish.
Everything happens for a reason. Then I’d like to see the paperwork.
Give it time. Fine. Give me the exact date.
You deserve better. I know. I wanted this.
At least you found out now.
At least. At least.
I’ve started collecting these
the way you’d collect stones from a beach
you never wanted to visit. -
Mutual Friends
Our friends are trying to be fair.
They ask which evenings I am free
before they tell me what they’re planning.At dinner someone starts a story
I was there for,
then stops before your name.I say it for them.
The story gets its ending.
Everyone laughs.
I laugh, too.
It was funny.
I remember. -
The Friend Who Didn’t Know
You told me about her on a Tuesday,
lit up like a porch at dusk,
and I said, That’s wonderful,
and it was, for you.
I helped you pick the shirt.
I said the restaurant was a good idea.
There is a kind of heartbreak
no one sends flowers for,
because it never had a name. -
Just in Case
The last thing you wrote was I’ll call.
I believed you long past the hour
when believing became waiting.I left the sound on through a movie.
I carried the phone into the next room
to fetch something I no longer remember.Even now, when I set it down,
I turn the screen toward me.I tell myself
I am expecting other people.
Looking Back Without Rewriting It
-
A Good Thing That Ended
People want me to say it was a mistake.
It would be easier.
But I remember you carrying my aunt’s suitcase
up three flights without a word,
and the way you read every menu out loud
in voices, as if the waiter couldn’t hear.
It wasn’t a mistake.
It was a good thing
that ended,
which is a sadder sentence
and a truer one. -
Letter I Won’t Send
Dear you, I hope the new job lets you leave by six. I hope someone tells you when there’s spinach in your teeth, the way I used to, with that little tap on my own front tooth. I hope your mother’s knee is better. I’m not writing to change anything. I’m writing because for four years you were the first person I told things to, and a habit like that doesn’t stop when it stops being useful. It just stands by the door with its coat on, waiting for someone to tell it that it can go home.
-
From the One Who Left
I had practiced what to say
until it sounded almost calm.
Then you asked
if I’d be staying for dinner.You had already set out two plates.
I remember that
more clearly than my reasons,
though I had reasons
and they haven’t changed.I left.
All the way home
I kept thinking of you
putting one plate back. -
Friendship, Ended
You stopped answering after the move.
Your birthday still pops up on my phone
like a ghost who knows the calendar.We were going to be old together,
two women on a porch, ranking the neighbors’ dogs.
I still think about which dog would win.
I still think you’d pick the wrong one,
and I’d let you. -
Nine Hours
Nobody did anything wrong.
That’s what makes it hard to explain.
There was an ocean, and a visa,
and two good jobs on opposite sides of it,
and a time difference that meant
one of us was always going to sleep
while the other was waking up.
We said I love you across nine hours
until it sounded like an echo
of something said in a room
we’d both moved out of.
What Remains After Goodbye
-
Rearranging
I moved the couch today.
I wanted to see the room
from somewhere I hadn’t sat.
It turns out the window is bigger
than I thought.
It turns out the afternoon
comes in at a different angle
when I’m not facing the door. -
Tally
Today I heard our song
and finished my sentence.
Today I said your name
in a story about something else.
Today I cooked dinner
and set the table for one.Nobody hands out medals for this,
so I made one:
it’s tinfoil,
and I’m wearing it to bed. -
The Photograph We Won’t Take
Somewhere there was going to be
a photograph of us at sixty:
your hat held down against the wind,
me laughing because you wouldn’t
stop complaining about the cold.We never booked that trip.
We never chose the place.But I had already put us there,
and now I miss a day
neither of us has lived. -
The Low Radio
At night I leave the radio so low
I cannot make out what the voices say.
A woman laughs. A man begins a story.
I hear the pause before she answers him.We used to talk like that about the day:
who called, what broke, the thing we ought to buy.
Nothing a person would have written down.
The radio is on. I let it play. -
What Stays
When a person goes,
some things go with them:
the inside jokes, the Sunday plans,
the way you used to say home
and mean the same address.But I still make the soup you taught me.
I play the band I found through you.
I look both ways twice
on the street that always worried you.In the margin of the recipe,
beside the salt,
you wrote, A little more.I still do.
