Story Time

At my favorite park, Ft. Tryon

He can be so charming.
He recites
The Beautiful Changes.
She is enthralled.

I like her, though,
very much.

I want to be her friend,
I think,
but she is his friend,
first.

I smile at him then,
veiling my antipathy,
as the women in the room
want to fuck him,
and the men in the room want to
be him.

She asks him to recite,
yet again,
The Beautiful Changes.
I ask him not to.
Please, no, I say.
I’ve heard it 5,000 times before.
I’ll repeat it for you later,
he tells her.
She smiles.

The women in the room
think I’m a bitch.

The men in the room
think I’m a bitch,
and she thinks,
do you realize how lucky you are
to have a man recite you love poems?

I stand and get myself another drink.

I want to explain,
he’s not saying the words to me,
for me,
or for you,
but, instead,
to hear the melody of them
cascade from his lips,
to imbue them with his breath,
to wear them as his own.

Later, from her bedroom,
I hear him
being Richard Wilbur,
again.

"On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves
Any greenness is greener than anyone knows.”

Anyone knows, she repeats.
A leaf leafier…
I love that line, she says.
Does he write sonnets?
Yes, he tells her, he does.
It is such a beautiful poem, he says.
She agrees,
and her eyes ripen
to abet the words
she doesn’t say.

I hear you, I tell them.
We all laugh.
If you two start kissing,
I add,
I’m going to be pissed.

The man with the glasses
agrees I’d have a right to be.

Later, we arrive home,
check on the pets
and the locks.

Within two minutes
he has,
accidentally
he will claim,
fallen asleep on the futon.

I go to our bed, which used to be just
my bed,
again,
alone.