Buttered Toast

both sides

The Magic Circle - John William Waterhouse - 1886

Buttered Toast

You always called your vodka tonic
a little bit of dirty rain water.
Its taste, an almanac
for all kinds of bad weather.

The clink of ice as the glass glides
to your lips, you bite the rim.
Oh, the trouble that we’ll make,
the trouble that we are in.

Vodka is not transparent
if held to the light too long.
We studied it hard, you and I,
like staring at the sun.

In older times, they’d burn you as a witch.
We quote Macbeth to each other.
You said, they should try,
your smile, a natural disaster.

There were stars in the reservoirs of your eyes,
the veracity of Woolf with Plath’s intensity.
You said I was punk rock, I was not.
Your body, a winged victory.

You once told me you’d woken
in the middle of the night,
you held your hands out through the window
and were struck by lightning.

You told me of a dream
of the long dead under bridges.
I said I knew a man once
who walked into the bar’s deep freeze.

He couldn’t find release,
his shift found him frozen solid in the morning.
You thought that was a metaphor,
I was just saying what was happening.

You said I loved like a child,
and you were not my mother.
And though I was happy as a child,
I should choose another.

Your last message to me,
you were drinking whiskey, reading Ishiguro.
Come over. I said I couldn’t.
If we’re friends, that’s not what friends do.

You said, we will never be friends.
Then you left. And that was it.
The silence settled where you’d been.
Nothing followed. If Caesar says, so be it.

I think you had a baby.
It will, of course, be beautiful.
If she’s a girl, I feel sorry
for all the boys she’ll ruin.

But how I remember you
is that morning.
Your parents were away.
You woke me, the sun was golden.

We were in God’s quiet country.
The room was soft with early light.
You handed me tea in porcelain
so thin it held dawn’s sight.

I could see the shadow of my finger
through the cup as I drank.
I can still recall the taste,
longer than I think.

Butter running off warm toast,
crumbs naked on your bed.
The things we choose to remember,
the things we’ll never forget.