To My Love, the Man on Lincoln Avenue Who Yelled, “Hey Sexy. Nice Ass.”
Grease-stringed hair blew up in the breeze off Lake Michigan,
tinged with the first freeze of fall,
wafting over a cinder-block hit of Axe and spray-tan aerosol,
the first (and only) time I heard your crow-like caw.
Your head fell heavy toward my hefty derriere, my
middle finger ascending of its own accord to meet your gaze at the very moment it
flew from your mouth,
our great love story, "Hey, sexy."
"Nice ass."
It's been 973 days since the corner of Lincoln and Halstead
and you could have been my anyone, my noone,
my 116, my iced plums, my Annabel Lee, but I'm trapped in
"to be or not to be" for that is the question, the question,
the question of without you, who is me?
I've spent years yearning for what might have been, lost
in daydreams of you and me and a concrete yard and a murder
of bubble-butted children cawing at us as we
watch on,
my ass grown so bulbous over the years that it rests on a throne you created with
calloused hands, tough from years of rubbing
paper-bag-covered liquor bottles,
our progeny drenched in the stench of you,
B.O. and drug-store deodorant so familiar after all these years.
If only I had paused that day, we might have shrunk and wrinkled and grayed
together, marking the calendar by the laugh lines around your eyes, pictures
of graduation ceremonies lining our walls, wiry white hairs
sprouting from my asscheeks like tulips with the first breath of spring.
You might have plucked them, one by one, flipped
me over when it was done to suck your thick
chocolate milkshake, knowing every ice-cream drop would add to my spherical surface area.
We'd have had our ups and downs:
my insecurity over you screeching to younger women on their daily slog to the grocery store,
your insecurity over my career,
their rejections,
your penis,
pretty much everything,
really,
but we would have persevered for this, the greatest love story.
It's been 973 days since the corner of Lincoln and Halstead
and you could have been my anyone, my noone,
my 116, my iced plums, my Annabel Lee, but I'm trapped in
"to be or not to be" for that is the question, the question,
the question of without you, who is me?
973, 973, 973 days of stopping at every plea,
at every catcall, every scream, every construction worker's bosom-based banshee shriek and
for a moment I'm lost in dreams
of you and me and what might have been.
For a moment I swear it's you and I wiggle my ass and ready my charm and my wet
heart squelches to a halt and my breath abates and I wait
just
a
moment
before turning to see that it's never you.
It's nothing but another weak facsimile admiring my awe-inspiring ass,
reminding me of what might have
could have
would have been
if only I hadn't been too terrified shy to
call the police punch you in the face stop and give you my number.
It would have been white roses, white dresses, white-
walled apartments, your mayonnaise-white mother
who never taught you to respect women form a formal bow-tie so I
would have lovingly knotted your saggy orange neck on the day our granddaughter,
cloaked in white, said her vows to her own great love,
the man in the meatpacking district who yelled, "Hey, sexy."
"Nice tits."
