A couple walks by, 3pm. I
follow them a moment with
my eyes and, unable to resist
as they play at bickering, with
my neck, so, okay, I’m staring,
rolling my eyes a bit as they
disappear over the hill. I’m
thinking couples, hmph! It is
a feeble attempt at being a
little bitter and it doesn’t last
long, comes across to me as
fake. Later, though, in bed by
around 8:30, not sleeping yet,
of course, my mind does its
thing. Surely it’s my neck that
is the culprit, the rememberer,
craning as it did earlier in the
afternoon, but I’m filled for a
few—I could say tortured, but
I’d be kidding—minutes or so
with a discerning nostalgia,
greedy memories, mostly of
the succulent tactility of spoon
ing, how tangible, as the sec
ond hand ticks (the memory
mixed with the sounds of some
one’s wristwatch, but whose?).
How each tick from the timepiece
moves the titillating connect
ivity of the surfaces of skin
that have found themselves
smushed onto the surfaces
of someone else’s heats
inevitably into an uncom
fortable sweat until that
couple, one of them you,
sleeps, perhaps soundly,
snoring at the edges of the
bed, that oblong stretch of
space, a vacuum, between.
