Half-Forgotten Street

By Claire Rinterknecht

Photo Credit: Claire Rinterknecht

It’s not that I’m unhappy,

It’s just that I’m also sad,

and people don’t like messy.

They prefer to leave it behind,

as a half-forgotten street.

The street where I told you I wasn’t afraid of love,

I was scared of being loved for someone else,

someone I was not.

You asked me,

‘Why do you smile at strangers?’

‘To bring out their human.’

‘Nobody wants to die,’ he proclaimed,

hands held wide to include us all.

I stared at his unseeing eyes.

‘I do,’ I whispered.

You coughed sometimes

so I would look at you.

I was only trying to tell you how I need to die.

I looked at your scar.

‘Where’s it from?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Let me tell you.’

I looked out the window.

‘I’m the bad guy in your story.’

There was a downbeat as you covered your face.

Your room’s sun-yellow wallpaper eclipsed.

I thought you would cry

but you didn’t.

You didn’t, and I’m still trying to figure out why.

‘I can hear the lights,’ you said,

lifting your face.

‘I’d like to visit temple libraries.’

‘Buckingham Brown.’

‘A headstone engraved with the word: Future.’

‘Moon debris.’

They tell us who we are

and we nod, 

as though they are right,

as though they know the girl

who keeps a paintbrush in her toothbrush jar;

who says she’ll be ready

in two shakes of a lamb’s tail;

who has allergic reactions to love;

who needs literature for her insanity

and art for her happiness;

who knows erosion

is the only law

because a grain of sand told her so;

who watches people’s thighs

to see if it is muscle or fat that jiggles,

because she can never tell;

who stands at the bottom of a mountain

and feels huge, 

not small.

Like evening air in southern France.

It smells of stale tobacco,

hot cement and dry green.

It tastes nostalgic and romantic.

You looked beautiful under the streetlamp,

your hair bobbing up and down,

your eyes dancing in the light,

on the half-forgotten street.