She Thinks I’m Mean

I’m hoarse when Katie finally calls me to say goodnight from the bachelorette party she’s attending, because I went to a baseball game. I’m also still slightly drunk.

“Yeah, it was good, and the Cyclones actually won!” I rasp.

“Stop saying that!” she snaps, half-joking.

Maps Don’t Know

The driver takes us to the back entrance of the U-haul parking lot, and the reason why Katie is only half-paying attention to my story about V-16 engines becomes clear: the fence at the entrance is locked. It’s always locked, it’s been locked for more than 10 years.

The driver doesn’t say anything, but I can tell he’s terribly disappointed. “I don’t know why the maps always send you this way, it’s never open,” she says, maybe hoping to cheer him up.

Wild Pigeons

I wait on the corner, sitting on a short wall that encompasses a small concrete yard in front of the old church. The little dot on my screen that represents Katie as she rides her scooter back from her studio creeps across the map, and a cool breeze blows as dusk approaches.

There’s a commotion behind me, and I turn to find a trio of pigeons regarding me warily, as if I’m the one who just showed up from nowhere, and not them. I think of a poem by Mary Oliver, where she’s talking about just looking at something, not trying to say something fancy, just looking, so I’ll say that one of them was missing some toes, but the other one, with a black and white mottled head, his feet were pink, and perfect.

They Are Ravenous

“I have a question,” Katie says, “and it’s not about the show or politics or anything.”

“Okay,” I say, pausing The West Wing, which we’ve been watching.

“Why hasn’t Trump been talking about how he got shot at?” she asks. “Because if I was running his campaign,” she continues as I consider this, “I would have him talking about how, like ‘I got shot for you,’ at every ravenous Republican rally,”

Some Persistence

More than a decade ago, at a party thrown by one of our roommates, a friend of mine, after a few drinks, tried to ride a fixie bike to impress a girl and ended up face planting on the asphalt, leaving a trail of blood up the stairs, and giving himself a nice scar and a good story.

Today, some fifteen years later, we meet up to go for a walk in the park, and he’s got a noticeable limp. “Oh, what girl were you trying to impress this time?” I ask.

As it turns out, there wasn’t a girl, and it wasn’t a fixie, but he WAS on a bike, so at least he’s consistent.

punched in the face

“Then when I was six, I think? This guy was bothering some friends of mine and I challenged him to a fight and he punched me in the forehead, and I cried.”

“Six?” Katie says, her face contorting in pity.

“Yeah, I was fine,” I say, realizing I don’t really want to talk about it anymore, and that maybe telling every story isn’t a way to feel good.

Edit the Vilanelle

“If you change that comma to a semi-colon, and the put dashes between ‘red,’ ‘white,’ and ‘blue,’ it’ll make more sense and hit harder,” Katie says. I flip the fake chicken patties I’m frying and nod in agreement, with a huge grin on my face.

“I really appreciate you helping me edit my stuff,” I tell her later.

“Just ask the person who doesn’t like poetry!” she says.