The List

I confessed my infidelity resulting in abortion.

After listening,

she bolted from a desk chair

in my bedroom,

and destroyed without words,

everything on the walls,

smashing the floor lamp as the finale.

She moved to Seattle within weeks,

gone forever from Portland.

A few weeks later she mailed me a poem:

I’ve kept the poem for 40 years.

It began on a terrace bar overlooking the Willamette River as it scissored Portland in half.

She sat at a table next to me.

Then she sat across from me.

Summer 86.

An art student in LA

on break to see her family and fiance.

She performed a perfect imitation of Rocky’s voice from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon.

She sprayed me with melting ice from her drained gin and tonic

without any provocation,

laughing, saying I needed cooling off.

We slept together later that afternoon

in my $132 a month studio apartment.

She wasn’t engaged after that.

We climbed Saddle Mountain,

threw a football around,

rammed each other in bumper cars,

played tennis, air hockey,

floated Lake Shasta on a houseboat,

floated the Clackamas River on a raft,

splurged for a night at the Heathman Hotel,

celebrated Christmas together decorating a tree with cans of Rainier,

saw Robert Cray before he exploded,

drove my Valiant at breakneck speed

belting out songs from The Cure

thundering on the the cassette player

she helped me install.

I revealed my desire to become a writer.

But I was going to teach instead.

She said don’t do it.

I wrote her two letters a day.

After she graduated

I flew to LA and we drove her Grapes of Wrath pickup back to Portland.

I helped move her into a studio apartment

the shape of an octagon

now razed for an intersection.

Then my confession, not born of accusation,

everything pulverized.

A letter from Seattle arrived several years later.

She was married.

She forgave me.

We began writing letters again.

No, I haven’t written a damn thing. I hate teaching.

I hate my graphic design job. I’ve got to quit.

Cancer struck, a rare type.

She qualified for experimental treatment.

I saw her a final time, bald, emaciated.

Imagine our worst hangovers multiplied ten times and they never go away.

She died.

Her husband returned all my letters.

He knew they should be mine.

I have never read them.

One day.

I want to read the Big Bang of my heart,

cosmic material that coalesced into a writing life.

She didn’t live long enough to read my books,

going on 30 now.

I know she would have loved the one about rain.

We had a rain story together,

it took place in the sun.

Her list was right, except for number six.