Twenty-Two Years Later,
At Orchard Supply Hardware
I tell the man in the green apron I want a flashlight,
glance at his name tag: Mike.
He is short and thick-shouldered,
olive-skinned, his hair parted down the center.
I remember this body.
I remember his square hands caressing
the leaves of his three marijuana plants,
later stolen from this back yard
just as they flowered.
He would squeeze a Lucky Strike
between two fingers the size of sausages,
light up, squat down in his spit-shined boots,
and gaze like a tender sheepdog
at his Rhode Island Reds,
and strange Japanese hens that laid blue eggs.
In the summertime he took me to dry creekbeds
to rake the banks with a crowbar.
I found a brass key and bottle
with the word "Happiness" in raised letters
along the side.
He gave me a book of etchings.
I remember how we played
like the nymphs and satyrs in the drawings,
him taking my breast in his hands,
me grasping the muscles of his thighs.
He disappeared the week before
the baby was sucked from my body
like a bean through a straw.
Twenty-two years later, Mike directs me to Aisle 10.
He says he must have met me somewhere before.
"Tell me your name," he says.
"I don't remember your name."
Kathy Abelson