{previously published
here}
1.
A loaf of bread, which may or may not have been consumed by us, with cheese, three hours before. I don’t seem to remember it, but you insist upon its reality. You say it was a baguette, a bit softer than you like, with crumbs collected in the bottom of the bag. I remember the Brie. It was $7.59 and spread like butter.
2.
The laughter of children passing in the street, one of them perhaps on a scooter, the kind from the late 80s that’s just a skateboard with a long neck on front for steering. There are children in this neighborhood, three of them named Noah. I remember yelling and the barking of a dog. What would they be laughing at?
3.
Reading glasses. You lost them yesterday, when you fell asleep on the couch. When you woke up you couldn’t find them and haven’t yet so far.
4.
A glass of wine that shattered on the pavement when you started laughing too hard. We tried to sweep up the glass but didn’t know where to put it. The wine that had been in the glass made the broom bristles wet and purple and stick together and useless for sweeping. I repeated what I’d said and you hit me in the arm. You didn’t laugh again. Your car was parked down the street and I wondered why.
5.
An uncomfortable silence, in the living room, that went on forever.
6.
Your necklace with the cross. You took it off because it hung too low. The clasp wouldn’t work so you slid it up, over your head, your arms long and your elbows wide angles. You put it on the dresser and smiled at me.
7.
The smell of wet leaves, because it rained that night. A cat was caught in it and came inside through someone’s kitchen window, mewling, its eyes large and yellow. In the dark it looked like a hunchback.
8.
A steak knife, which you said you used to cut the bread. I still don’t remember.
9.
The dresser, which you placed your necklace on. It was old and made of cedar, and when you opened the drawers it still smelled dry and warm and sweet like fresh-cut wood. There was a large mirror mounted on the back of it, and paled photographs, tucked into the frame, that showed a happy woman on a mountaintop, in the Louvre, feeding ducks, on a train. You told me she looked like a lobster. It made no sense.
10.
The night and the day, both of which have shattered, have drifted away on the ever-rising tide.