Ephemera

 
Darling, I
finally opened the last lavender soap
I bought on our day trip to Johnstown
where we stopped
at the distillery and bought bourbon
that tasted of cherries and fire
before heading to the Italian specialty store
owned by two gay men
where we bought black squid ink pasta
and some kind of sauce
before driving back home stopping
at a gaming store so you could look for Magic
cards, and thought about stopping
at the casino
but didn’t
and when we got home
I cooked the pasta in the sauce
singing to Spotify as we sipped our bourbon
(smoke and cherry in our throats)
then served and ate the dish of
steaming black pasta
dark as the Mariana Trench
at its almost deepest point and it was
okay.

But.

Will anyone care about the minutiae
of our past life, the bourbon,
the lavender, the flood souvenirs,
the 8×10 of Elaine Stritch
pinned on the wall of the bar,
the twinkly shop dedicated to St. Brigid,
the overlook we stopped to look over,
maintained by Troop 801
and, and?

Most likely
not.
I say it’s a poem
but I lie.
I am just rearranging
scraps
so they do not scatter,
lost, lost.
I paste them.
Save this part:

Darling, I
remember moments of us
when we dashed off into mountains
and boomeranged home
to gather
and create
and when I said
home
I meant your home
close to each other as breath
leaving me
to wonder if we
should have taken a gamble,
if we shared two worlds or
one
nothing left now but the smoke
of tart cherry
and on this last page black ink
drying

***

(Featured image from Pexels)