Since she slept most of the day,
he just went ahead and came around
every couple of hours.

He was going to be wrong
and a humble legend dressed like a sentimental
jerk no matter what he said or did,
so there was some freedom in that.

He was unreasonable. He wasn’t very smart.
His eyes were cursed. New York was eating him alive.
Six or seven times a day, he was almost run over
by traffic while being robbed and converted
to three different religions simultaneously.

Lightning and runaway monsters
ruined every trip
he ever made to Central Park.

Trying to learn isn’t the same
as knowing when to step back
before the piano comes down
from the five hundredth floor.

Obviously,
so it was obviously pretty easy
for him to fall in love with her.

They had never actually met.
She was the roommate of a girl
who did everything she could
to keep everyone at the party from realizing
the fastest way to finally growing up.

Just call a cab or head out the door.

It scared the roommate to death,
but the girl he was in love with
never got out of bed long enough to vote.

He was there for all three days
and didn’t see the guy who brought him
along until an ambulance came to pick him up.

Most of the time,
he stepped aside when too many people
were trying to fall down and stay down.

He took quiet bets on the stability of light bulbs
and kept the kitchen sink free of dirty dishes.

The reasonably well-read and unbelievably beautiful
laughed, argued over music and threw up everywhere.
They were constantly disappearing
and reappearing with nothing to show for it. They would
melt in close-nit groups of five.

He saw a lot of desperation
in those good times. He kept making faces at the music.

He found her room by accident. They didn’t talk
for more than five minutes. She knew how to hide
everything under three blankets. He was drunk,
and she was polite but quick to get him to leave.

All three days aside,
he didn’t really wake up until two days
after the roommate started smashing things
and ruining what was left of her dress.

His memory
consisted of what he knew for sure,
his record collection after a mysterious reorganizing binge
and the photographic evidence that surfaced online.

It didn’t make a difference. He was happy to be alive,
happy to wake up on his bus route and pleased to still have
all ten fingers.

It wasn’t until he got home
that he started thinking about her and getting
all kinds of ideas from what he was thinking about.

You can draw any number of theories
on what got him thinking. You could blame it on the city,
the insomnia, bad luck. The lovers next door who fought
to the death and resurrected themselves so
many times that going to hell
and back eventually cut their height down to dwarf size.

Somehow,
he got it into his head
that he was in love with her
and that they had managed
to work out all the details in five minutes.

He’s been going by her place
with flowers and movies ever since.

She won’t see him.
Her roommate gets to keep all the gifts
and impose her own memories on them.

This guy is stubborn.
He’s giving the city twenty years
and the love of his life another twenty-five.

An hour each day is given to making
something clear, definitive out of what they talked about
for those few minutes. The actual words hide, choke, duck, change
outfits breathlessly, imitate heroics and reveal nothing.

The meaning remains consistent,
and his hope is surprisingly willing
to keep up with his imagination.

08/15/2009

Posted on 08/15/2009
Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Ricard