I was looking at this woman in a dress.
When we got to her house I instantly
fell in love
with her bookshelf.
Everything you need to know
about a person
you can tell from a bookshelf.
This is not a deep thought.
After she changed,
she was wearing
a T-shirt of The Cure
(slightly cut up
so that her clavicles
taunted a little
in the light
cast from the television),
l.e.i. pajamas,
and presumably underwear of some sort.
Her bra was hanging
on one of the towel racks
in her bathroom.
I was wearing a pair of jeans
and a black T-shirt
as I so often do.
She walked with a particular grace
and had this pure confidence.
She lay down.
Then I lay down.
I couldn’t take my eyes off of her
and I wasn’t that drunk
and I felt so nervous that I was nearly
falling out of bed
and she kept laughing at me.
After not much time
I stood to leave and sleep
on the floor and she
brushed a strand
of blonde hair
to the left of her eyes
-Where are you going?
-To sleep on the floor
-But why?
-If I stay here longer
I will want to kiss you
She told me to come back
and so I did.
We talked about drinking and life
and despair and she slept
on my shoulder
and she was beautiful.
After perhaps an hour of
being stranded in the blankets and thinking
of my life,
and of how I, like everyone,
have secrets enough to smother Jonah’s whale,
and how everyone knows it
and that’s why it ends up alright,
(we hate to be surprised)
so I kissed her cheek
and went to the other room.
I pulled out a Bukowski book
from the middle shelf
and walked to the kitchen.
It took me five minutes to find
the bread
(on top of the refrigerator).
I fried two eggs
over-easy,
in some oil I got
from a glass bottle that had a stopper,
with
ground black pepper
garlic powder
and salt from a plastic shaker.
I made two pieces of toast
(a little more well done than
I would have preferred).
The bread was a little too tall
for the toaster.
I overcame this by slathering
them with margarine.
I sat and read Bukowski
and ate
the eggs
and the toast
and put the book right where
it came from
(left side)
and went into her room
and she was still beautiful
and the television was still on
and the sun was bright in the sky.
I whispered to her
and touched her shoulder
and she rolled over
and for three hours
I slept with her in my arms
and felt happy.
I woke to her dogs’ tongues
in my face
and I put my arms
like an X
in front of my face
and blinked at the sun.
I brushed my teeth with
some toothpaste and my finger.
One of the things that just
slays me
about women
is when they’re
stunners right when
they wake up
in the morning.
She took me home
and on the way back,
as I always do,
I flipped off the church
by the freeway.
It has it coming.
I do not know
if she noticed.
I think she would not
have cared.
I got out of the car and said goodbye
and fought every impulse to turn around
because I was afraid that she’d notice
and
start laughing at me
again.
I walked upstairs and listened to
Asturias,
the one Segovia played
when he was about ninety,
and thought that
I had had one weird hell/heaven
of a day.
Sometimes I feel as though
I have been alive forever.
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