Forgetting

Last fall’s leaves stick along the side of the spring-wet street, and hundreds of drops run the course of a window in the café where I came to have an espresso and think about someone I’ve just met. Memories of you hide in the leaves and in the droplets, but she is the café, the hum of the lights and the still air.

Sometimes I dream of you and me in rocking chairs, the wet knot inside untied, or cut in half by some passing philosopher dressed as a dog. I wake, and I wait, and I outgrow my anger. In the meantime, my life is a series of studio apartments. Café menus in any language but my own. E-mails addressed to the people you were. Memories stick to the streets, clog up the drains. Leech into our roots to feed the next season’s flowering.
She’s the daughter of a friend of my aunt. I met her at a dinner in Ramos Mejia, tried to talk to other people at the table, but kept falling back into conversation with her. After, we shared a cigarette in the garden, and I kissed her without considering. I sit here remembering the soft resistance of her lips, the tip of her tongue, the edge of her tooth. People hurry out of the rain. The streets glow, and the drains clog up with leaves.