An
Unwanted Admirer
The cold of the bus stop wind grabs at my blue jeans.
A panther-pink coat and a grass-yellow scarf passing by
Turn to face me and are suddenly flush cheeks and dark Asian eyes.
She smiles, says hello and I say,
‘Nothing,’
then realize the mistake
And ask the question I had incorrectly anticipated from her.
She awkwardly slows her pace, her body deciding on the bus
But her feet, still pleased to take the intended walk,
Betray her thoughts.
She says she has not seen me in a while.
Memories of that night linger in my mind when
She gave me brunette Cuban rum and I granted her my company.
Snapshots of conversation surface but
sink again like
A grape reacting to carbonation.
What was it I had said?
The footprints in the snow mark the passing
of other uncomfortable bus riders.
Shifting feet, swaying bodies.
The bus that should come on the sixes
arrives sometimes on the eights,
other times on the fours.
But sometimes
it is Saturday
And the bus does not come.
When
I belonged
The first year? I remember it
(as they take the field,
stiff in Polyester)
In handwritten music and toes to the sky.
I remember it
in words that meant nothing to most,
But meant everything to us.
in ice cream socials with neither vanilla nor chocolate,
but rather, Jagermeister, Budweiser, Popov.
Bring your own ice cream.
See Jim Davis if you can’t buy your own ice cream.
Hip hya! Charge out of the gates!
drill…
upon drill…
upon endless drill…
One more time, one more time!
We marched for the weekends when
we traded horns for hangovers and
valve oil for something with a higher proof,
columns and files for strewn bodies
on couches and bottles where they fell,
Marking the happenings of the night before
like a 3D game of connect-the-dots…
Like the memories I have now when
I watch them march on,
Horns to the press box like bottles tipped up.
I know the music they play after the show,
and I long for
One more time, one more time…