Remember

Remember that time
across a table
in el Abasto
as evening set
as dessert was served
when you leaned in
and voiced a stunning question?
A timely question?
An unspoken question?
Thus far in our acquaintance.

I found the courage to call you there
for clarity
to search for the unseen
yet magnetically
perpetually
energetically felt.
Eyes nose and ears again.

To my surprise
you assented
disproving my assumptions
about your reliability
about your availability
about your fleeting affection
fleeting attentions.

I expected you to cancel
to bail out
to fade
and dissolve into the background again.
I wonder if I wished it
for the relief from
persistent wonderings
about you
about myself
in your presence.

Then there you were
appearing as agreed
as I wrote my interrupted story.
Warm relief. Unstoppable laughter.
Once again. With you.

It wasn’t clear to me quite why you came.
I haven’t stopped being suspicious
of your motives and intentions
your interests
your unapologetic basic needs.
What more could you want from me?
After I dispensed what I thought
was my only utility
that you had no use for
anymore.
Extinguished after an awkward first bite.
For what purpose did you appear?

You asked me that night
across the table
in el Abasto
“can you separate sex from love?”

Caught in my own paradox
in the illusion of either or
I gave you the wrong answer.

I responded mindlessly,
answering from an old self
who fucked her way through grief,
numbed, unmoored and anonymous
recalibrating to a lost identity
in an abandoned landscape
far flung
in fairy lands.

Now that we both know
a little more
about who you are
and who I am
across the equator
across time
you taught me that
I gave the wrong answer.

You are the evidence.
Persistent evidence
Of that.