It was my birthday and we stood—you, beautiful, youthful; me, spectacled, unable for the life of me to comb my hair correctly—in the lobby of a hibachi steak house. After, I remember we were all over each other in the cramped cabin of my truck, in a field, on the deck of your pool. I don’t remember you crying, though maybe you wanted to.
And I wasn’t helping, being myself. We’d weather a few more months’ worth of disasters together: I took and used what you gave and after, always remorse. Rinse, repeat. It’s funny now, sort of—nothing we could make last, at least. I keep the picture as a bookmark in Auden’s Collected Poems, placed now facing ‘Lullaby,’ so it’s like the two of us are reading poems together—
lay your sleeping head, my love, human on my faithless arm—Auden knew what affection costs us in headache, heartache; ours no different, so it’s fitting to leave us there, in his care. We do look happy, standing by the lobby couches, against each other bright in the camera flash, under lights, my class-ringed finger gripping your shoulder, yours my waist.
The other day I saw you engaged, saw the picture of the two of you closer than us, faces touching, smiles honest. He looks nice, and you, happy. But between us: what we said, how we suffered, it’s all still there, though better as memory (we’d have been very unhappy together); better like this: posed always in affection, in the dark of leftover words