February 8, 2020Barcelona
She was not the one who let you kiss her
behind the fake palms at the wedding reception.
She was not the one who went with you to Star Trek
number whatever and your knees bumped together
and struck intergalactic sparks in the back row.
She was not even the one who did your loads
of laundry in college and typed two and a half
term papers for you and cried at the bus station
while it was snowing like a scene from a bad novel.
The one you’ll remember until you stop
remembering is the girl who sat beside you
in eighth grade biology and she kept smiling
sunbeams of encouragement as you dropped
then fumbled the scalpel and she had brown hair
and an implied continent of freckles and a short dress
and skinny legs and all the boys said Chrissie
was too nerdy because she got 100’s on all the quizzes
and had a rock and mineral collection at home
that she dared to discuss over a half pint of milk
at the cafeteria lunch table. Together you took apart
the fetal pig and it seems like yesterday becomes today
because in your mind it is as if you were married
to Chrissie for those two piggy days in that class
more than anyone else you’ve known before or since.
From snout to curled tail she wasn’t girl-like yech
or gross but right there with you observing
the wonderful and frightening bits and pieces
such as sprawling liver, thumb-sized kidneys,
or tracing out the vas deferens and inguinal canal,
and you were accidentally brushing your foreheads
and touching each other’s still smooth hands
and those trusty knees came together beneath
the table in a way that did just about everything
except make a baby and that wasn’t actually necessary
because as unnamed boyfriend and girlfriend
your pig dissection discoveries were the actual equivalent
of your own offspring nursed with fumes
of formaldehyde and careful forceps pull
and tweezers squeeze until you put the remains
in a bag at the end of the last day and dropped
them in the hazardous waste container.
Then it was time for lab reports to be written,
grades to be entered in Mr. Bender’s book,
and for everyone to move on to another project.
You got a B and Chrissie nailed the A and she said
she was sorry and patted you on the back,
an entirely new gesture from her that moved you,
but you couldn’t say so. “It was just a pig,”
you told her but even then you knew it wasn’t
and that you would never ask her to a dance
or even see much of her again after this class was over.
The pig was everything, heaven and earth and love
and brief roses with no sequel. Years later
you heard that Chrissie was an indie singer
with a single in play, then the band fell from FM grace,
she faded away and moved to Barcelona of all places
where you hope, really hope, she is shaking a tambourine
as well as her long brown hair and that late at night
she still takes out her rocks and turns over some
of the interesting ones she has collected along the way.
from #28 - Winter 2007