Have I forgotten already
everything from that other life
with you—the first four years
of adulthood, if that’s what
you’ll let me call it—just because
the sun rose, set, slept a few
hundred times? Do you remember
the night in Ithaca we didn’t
sleep—late October,

like it is tonight—the motel room
furnace belching heat, the temperature
quivering at ninety, both of us
too afraid to sleep with the little
window open. Or in D.C., sitting
under pink cherry trees like other happy,
stupid couples. Everyone in this life
thinks I’m a bourbon, neat

but nights out with you I wore
your arm like a boa, smiled, asked for
Jack and Diet. Once we drove
to New Hampshire because we could.
And the New York winter mornings we spent
hiding from your landlord (the racist cop,
who once asked Help me with this dresser,
would you, it’s heavy as a dead nigger),

eating Hebrew National franks
in bed, our underwear left
to singe on the stove. That winter
the water in your toilet froze and I peed
on the racist’s lawn while you held
a blanket around me. Or all the Marlboros
we flicked at cars that drove too quickly

down Oxford Street, all the Marlboros
we bummed to the druggies streaming
in and out of our building, all
the Marlboros I said would give you
cancer again someday. The time
we drove an hour outside the city,
telling ourselves we’d only look

at the puppies, drove home with one
shivering on my lap—that dog’s
downstairs right now, sleeping
on my boyfriend’s chest. Later
I’ll join them and fall asleep thankful
for us three, together because somebody
once gave us up, somebody once
left us, somebody once let me leave.