Red Bathrobe

You’re standing in the doorway in my red bathrobe, one arm stretched out into the sun, a cigarette burning at the tip. You’re leaning on the jamb, talking about ghosts or contrails, the loneliness of Tony Soprano, the compound eye of the housefly. And so, Beloved, I can’t tell you it’s useless— despite your intentions, the smoke billows in. I ruined it between us. Oh, you helped—I admit that. But the dernier cri is: I hurt you and you left. Such an old story. What remains is the ache. Like the moon, hunk of rock chipped off, but never gone. Sometimes it seems I stumble around zig-zagging from wreck to wreck. What foolishness to think I’d be wiser or luckier or more blessed. And after all, I was granted you for a time (your just-washed hair coppery and dripping) trash-talking mean and funny about everyone we knew. Now you must be dissing me. I know exactly what you’re saying. But you say it less and less. I’ve never been grateful enough. I always want more and then more. That last time, you left the crushed stub of a Salem on the window ledge. It took years for the fragile paper to dissolve, for the chopped-up leaf to crumble, the strands of filter to finally come undone and be carried away in the wind.