If I hadn’t asked who you were having dinner with that night

I wouldn’t be crazy lost now and you wouldn’t have moved to

Connecticut with an eyebrowed cooking woman: something I would

never be.

If I hadn’t asked if you liked sleeping alone maybe

we would have grown accustomed to each other sighing

into our dreams, a hip teaspooned into a hip, yours so much

fuller than mine, sailing on into the night, no navigational devices needed.

Bacon for breakfast.

If I hadn’t read her emails maybe I could have forgotten the alert messages

coming almost daily into my cerebral cortex. Messages telling me the ice was

thin though it was late summer.

If I hadn’t asked why you were leaving maybe I would still believe you

did love me though now I see all I need to do is be silent and I’ll

never learn that.

To be published in the Cape Rock