A poem

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You stride in, all bangs, boots and curves

And ask the bartender for a whiskey. He instinctively begins to

Pour a house whiskey, and you stop him and ask instead for something

Japanese. You scan the room for an open table and take

The open seat next to me.

I respond by citing Mr. Darcy’s only good line.

“You’ll have to do better than that, sir.”

“Oh.”

I stand up to leave for a different part of the bar. You don’t look up

From your screen.

I place an earbud in my good ear and walk toward the door.

“You’re leaving?”

A puff of air darts out of my mouth. “What?”

Five beers in, I know better than to do anything but keep walking

Toward the door

Toward my awaiting Uber

Toward home

In the obsidian night,

But I turn back.

The streetlights jog by, like fields of lettuce do

When driving by in a car. Our fingers interlock. We kiss.

The driver speeds toward the Chinese place less than a mile away.

“Windy out.”

We nod, and remember how we went to the same place

A year ago

On the night we met.