Only you would exit that way, your cashmere sweater draped on a chair,
a lemon you nicked in your pocket. Only you could say when you don’t spend money
on yourself, people notice, and leave me believing it was sage advice. Only you served up
the perfect cappuccino – at Marco’s, at Besaw’s, and in your rented purple kitchen
as we fed each other hard little biscuits of truth. You didn’t let your past trap you –
not the meth, not bad boyfriends, not your brother in the basement. It was you
who showed me how to use shame as fuel, how to burn it to reach the next place. A true
Kinsey Six, in pearls and pink button-down dress shirt, pot belly, and porn mustache.
Somehow, still Catholic. You were the only one who knew where I went
that time he betrayed me. You said, he’ll never put you first, and you were right,
but you didn’t judge me when I went back. Those crossroads are gone,
and the city we loved is gone, too – the junk stores, the dive bars, the late-night diners
serving up flapjacks. I’ve aged without you. Not as well as you predicted. Would you know
where to find me? Would you know me if you did? I’m still here, B, in the kitchen,
my beat-to-hell ice maker hissing, while hors d'oeuvres cool on a wire rack, so good
we would gobble some hot standing over the sink. I’m still savoring all I can. Don’t worry –
I’m claiming my place in life’s pageant.
Linda Drach is a writer, public health policy analyst, and volunteer writing group facilitator for the nonprofit, Write Around Portland. Her poetry has been published in CALYX, Cathexis Northwest, Verseweavers, The Write Launch, Clackamas Literary Review, The Timberline Review, The Hole in the Head Review, and elsewhere. She is the poet laureate of a small house in Oregon, where she serves an audience of one human, one exceptionally attentive dog, and thousands of Douglas fir cones.
