Dry, but...

Sweet Memory by Osnat Tzadok

You graced my life for one year

but dazzled my imagination for Ever

and do you know why

because you asked me if I liked flowers

(though you already knew the answer)

and then looked at me as if to read my eyes

but your eyes were not there to read

only to make promises they could not keep

promises that would dry out and be defeated.

But does it matter?

And you bought me a rose

from the lady bent over herself

wearing a red scarf wrapped loosely

around her thinning hair

a single red rose gowned in clear cellophane

and you smiled quixotically and said

This rose is more special than a dozen

and I smiled thinly and thought

Maybe there is plenty in scarcity, oh well.

But does it matter?

And I will not ask if you remember our train trip

from Grasse to Menton

our heads resting one against the other

while we slept for minutes that seemed hours

and dreamed of that city of people living by the sea

but when the train stopped

we grasped at pieces of our dream

(and this, I knew you wouldn’t forget)

our hands trying to hold the scenes that

escaped like dust particles in air

and you said Give me your hand

as we stepped off the train into a nameless town

two stops earlier than our intended destination

a town that would readily forget us

though we had vowed to remember it forever.

But does it matter?

You might recall that we made it to Menton

(and this, too, I knew you wouldn’t forget)

and the salt-sprayed wind ruffled our hair

but the clouds tangled the kite we wanted to fly

and the sea licked our footprints from the sand.

But does it matter?

And would it have mattered

if we had stayed and not gone?

And if you had stayed…

Tonight

in a crowded room

you would have looked at me

I would have looked at you

our eyes like muddled pearls

and your eyes would have said

You are beautiful

and my eyes would have said

You make me feel beautiful.

We would have learned

one another’s intimacies in foreign places

in rooms with numbers on their doors

on unfamiliar beds where others before us

had unraveled their bodies

in the honeyed circles of momentary lust.

We would have departed and arrived

only to depart again

while leaving the eyes of others

rimmed by the redness of our absences.

We would have been carried along

by exotic breezes

sometimes with a smile

sometimes with our heads bowed

for the force of our emotion

or for the red lights of our own secret Amsterdam.

We would have completed one another’s sentences

and stopped one another in mid-blunder.

We would have wanted what we could not have

and had what we did not want.

We would have used given availabilities

and invented those we lacked.

But does it matter?

I still have

my red rose

and it is

dry

but undefeated

and beautiful

yet.