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<\/p>\n\n\n\nI confessed my infidelity resulting in abortion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After listening,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
she bolted from a desk chair<\/p>\n\n\n\n
in my bedroom,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and destroyed without words,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
everything on the walls,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
smashing the floor lamp as the finale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She moved to Seattle within weeks,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
gone forever from Portland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A few weeks later she mailed me a poem:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve kept the poem for 40 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It began on a terrace bar overlooking the Willamette River as it scissored Portland in half.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She sat at a table next to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then she sat across from me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Summer 86.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An art student in LA<\/p>\n\n\n\n
on break to see her family and fiance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She performed a perfect imitation of Rocky’s voice from the Rocky and Bullwinkle<\/em> cartoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She sprayed me with melting ice from her drained gin and tonic<\/p>\n\n\n\n without any provocation,<\/p>\n\n\n\n laughing, saying I needed cooling off.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n We slept together later that afternoon<\/p>\n\n\n\n in my $132 a month studio apartment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She wasn’t engaged after that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We climbed Saddle Mountain,<\/p>\n\n\n\n threw a football around,<\/p>\n\n\n\n rammed each other in bumper cars,<\/p>\n\n\n\n played tennis, air hockey,<\/p>\n\n\n\n floated Lake Shasta on a houseboat,<\/p>\n\n\n\n floated the Clackamas River on a raft,<\/p>\n\n\n\n splurged for a night at the Heathman Hotel,<\/p>\n\n\n\n celebrated Christmas together decorating a tree with cans of Rainier,<\/p>\n\n\n\n saw Robert Cray before he exploded,<\/p>\n\n\n\n drove my Valiant at breakneck speed<\/p>\n\n\n\n belting out songs from The Cure<\/p>\n\n\n\n thundering on the the cassette player<\/p>\n\n\n\n she helped me install.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I revealed my desire to become a writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I was going to teach instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She said don’t do it<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wrote her two letters a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After she graduated<\/p>\n\n\n\n I flew to LA and we drove her Grapes of Wrath<\/em> pickup back to Portland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I helped move her into a studio apartment<\/p>\n\n\n\n the shape of an octagon<\/p>\n\n\n\n now razed for an intersection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then my confession, not born of accusation,<\/p>\n\n\n\n everything pulverized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A letter from Seattle arrived several years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She was married.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She forgave me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We began writing letters again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No, I haven’t written a damn thing. I hate teaching.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I hate my graphic design job. I’ve got to quit.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Cancer struck, a rare type.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She qualified for experimental treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I saw her a final time, bald, emaciated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Imagine our worst hangovers multiplied ten times and they never go away.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n She died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her husband returned all my letters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He knew they should be mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have never read them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I want to read the Big Bang of my heart,<\/p>\n\n\n\n cosmic material that coalesced into a writing life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She didn’t live long enough to read my books,<\/p>\n\n\n\n going on 30 now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I know she would have loved the one about rain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We had a rain story together,<\/p>\n\n\n\n it took place in the sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her list was right, except for number six.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10039,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-poetry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10038"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10041,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10038\/revisions\/10041"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}