lucky

Iron and Wine: Each Coming Night

For memory.

I mean the smell of the basement with the iron on, the exact song I was humming, the way you asked me to come with you. How you smelled, and the color of your shirt. The damp cool of the basement and the stretch of grass between the house and the printshop, the small toads on the path in the mornings, how late I lay awake hoping you would pass a note under my door.

I mean riding the bus every weekend, and gladly. Passing half hour mark and hour mark and hour-and-a-half mark, exit 52 and home with you, smell of exhaust under a heavy atmosphere, taillights passing every twenty seconds, your hands coated in flour the first time you touched me, how sun came through your windowshades, the taste of orange pop and kissing you.

I mean an evening I finally came down to the studio and couldn't meet your eyes; ten square inches of borrowed paper printed with blue, Italianate flowers and the distance between your house and mine, the riverside, Riverside Avenue lit up like a jewel. The descent by the art building and our bicycles' wheels chipping up gravel, you touching my arm with the tip of your nose.

For my whole life, in fact.

Thirteen of you, and frightening and full of questions. And finding out in front of you I could be smart and interesting. All the poets I loved, all your loves of words growing, taste of snow leaving the classroom. I learned to hope. [Lucky life is like this] I want to put exclamation marks behind it--lucky, lucky life!

The letterbox that is rarely empty. The small word. I think of you every day, or you are so brave, and I miss you, too although we don't see one another. My sisters spead out across the land, knitting me into the pattern.

Oh lucky life.