He keeps seeing her there, wearing a blue shirt.
Though he knows that he was the one
wearing the blue shirt. That somehow, in his mind,
he has taken her shirt off and put his shirt
on her; which makes him wonder whether he’s
really in love with her, or just the image
of himself next to her, whether his desire for her
is really just desire for her desire
of him. But that’s silly, he thinks, you wanted her
the first time you saw her . . .
But simply because he found her so instantly
favorable does not mean, he knows,
that his desire has nothing to do with her (conceived)
desire for him; because if she hadn’t
looked at him that way in the coffee shop, if she
hadn’t turned on him that rapture
of attention, bringing an edge of spirit to his body,
then he wouldn’t be so unable to forget
her now, wouldn’t keep calling her shape to mind
out of the shoveling on of other shapes
that has filled the time between that coffee shop
and this. He flips the page of his book,
flips it back. You’re not in love with her, stupid,
she’s no different from any of these other girls
walking through the door, it’s just that you met her,
had coffee with her, felt the possibility
of touching her, almost kissed her . . . his mind goes
blank as he tries to remember her expression
during that moment . . .—How close did he come
before she pulled away?
The shorter
that distance, he realizes, the longer his desire will
remember her, trying to close that distance . . .
And it is possible for him to see his entire life now
as exactly the length of that distance,
closing in physical space, expanding in memory.
He looks down at his book, thumbs
the remaining pages, then flips back to the page
he was on, holding the book open before
him like a tray for whatever vision walks through
the door. And yet . . . He looks up. Just once,
if I could close that distance . . . just once have someone
I really wanted, who wanted me
back, at that same moment, with the same amount
of desire, then oh he would know love
as a shredding of the dull fabric of days . . .
—fabric
of restrooms and receipts, computer labs,
dentist offices, pipeline, wiring, fast-food interiors . . .
Desire in him remembers what tilted the self
toward the brink, what brought it out, a blue lumina,
into the current on the avenues, so that
taxicabs and towers, traffic lights, window lights,
pedestrians with their poodles, shadow-
shaking trees, all acquired a clarity, a briskness, giving
him a sense that there was no line
between his body and the city, that his motions
were the city’s motions, the span of his steps
the span of bridges, that from all the hotel rooms
the restaurants, the clubs, the bars,
the cinemas, the streets, the stadiums, the stations,
the secret, segregated life was coursing
through him: so that even now, as he lowers his head
back into his book, vaguely beginning to realize
that he can awaken to such a life at any moment, simply
by making it, not her, the object of his desire,
he keeps seeing her there, wearing his blue shirt . . .