On the Bus Someday

Of  that string of memories about our lost friendship I remember

being invited places as a pair, like a comedy team; and after

one party, our self-parody of our own stammering

speechlessness when introduced to Henrik, the Swedish god

auto mechanic; our twin, garish, purple-flowered swimsuits

from Kmart, outlining, around Texas, our sameness

and differences; our dual waitressing shifts across town,

and the long phone calls that followed with their emphatic

reiteration of every stingy six-top ordering candy-flavored

alcoholic drinks; the after-work visit where we brayed,

stomped, then blinked stupidly (while the needle hit

the LP’s end) at the empty fifth of gin left on the coffee table,

prompting a dim: Uh oh; your imitation of your mother’s

habitual and by-the-way inexplicable confession about you

to shoe salesmen: She has a  funny foot; the apartments,

the Olivettis, the boyfriends, all the thoughts exchanged

unedited like an experiment of the big, walk-in consciousness,

which we might have assumed the verbal equivalent

of sex for friends, and whatever closeness meant, we wanted

as much as we could have, it was our post-graduate work

in The Humanities. Even now, I can’t resist striking up

a conversation while standing on line, any line, or introducing

myself enthusiastically to whomever I am introduced,

but the truth is I am not looking for new friends at this point;

I am trying to locate the lost ones, the ones who left

through the hole of an argument decades ago,

a time more panicked and carefree than any other, except maybe

the early years of motherhood, which I missed sharing

with you on playground benches. But surely I will see you

on the bus someday, and your greeting will package

our jokes, advice, tears, book talk, our years of reliance.

And so I will expect you will tell me how much I have

misunderstood and wrongly assumed in these descriptions,

because I never expect those people who have mattered

to remain completely gone, even through death, or rebuke.

And of course I have to remember what parted us,

that I found faults with your other friends, that I spoke

as critically and crassly about them as I did about my own person,

and to this day I have to be careful of that trait, my junkyard

dog of expression, safe only with me on a too-long leash. Here,

again, telling you everything with no reason but for

memory’s insistence that I string an apology from what I see.