Prospect

 

      The pattern is made of light blue on thin cotton white and it only reaches halfway down to your knee; higher when you sit down next to me.  You were probably wearing something different but this is how you appear in my memory.  The grass gaped and yawned down to the pond where a dog was off his leash and chasing coots and mallards.  Black women in shouldered pairs were speaking in unrecognized languages as they pushed strollers with sleeping white children down the dirt path, a slightly gritty sound emitting from the wheels, punctuated by the syncopated rhythms of their separate strides and I wanted to whisper to you that I didn’t care about anything today but instead I picked up your crooked hand.  I wrapped my fingers into yours and looked up at your face.  Instead of making eye contact you laid back and closed your eyes, your hand limp in my desperate squeeze.  So I looked down at your legs as they traveled away from me towards the cheap flip-flops wound around your toes.  I could see a bruise forming on your leg where my knee had crashed the night before as I was attempting to scale your body.  It was sad knowing that we could sit here under the speck of a distant plane that foreshadowed the end of this dream, and know we couldn’t talk about it if we couldn’t drink a few bottles of wine.  And you knew that I was not made to be met on the path, and we both knew that you didn’t want the wine, you were only here to crush the grapes with your far away feet, but we knew that if we didn’t say anything we could wait just a little longer.