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I fell in love with the way his voice
quivered over bits of your diary,
reverential as reading Shakespeare:
we twirled and twirled, his arm
on my waist, I just didn't want him
to stop.
For years, I've pictured you
chasing a squirrel in the arboretum,
sundress whipping around your legs
like clothes on a clothesline
in a painting by Cassatt.
He's curled beneath a Carolina pine
memorizing the paradigm "to love"
in Latin, Irish, Welsh. Breathless
you flop beside him, tuck a dandelion
behind his ear, wait for him to kiss you
--he throws acorns at the squirrel.
He said you broke up because
he slammed a guy against a concrete wall
--plastered him like a life-size poster
for taunting you--while you yelled
let him go, you'll get hurt;
because when you asked him
to write a love letter--a serious one
--the ink froze in his pen.
He didn't say he put his hands
on your shoulders and shook you
ragged as the paperdoll you dressed
and undressed for years, that his touch
was cool and tentative as a cousin's,
that you never saw him cry.
And I wonder if you fell in love
over Guinness in a gray October
when he whispered you look like her.
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