Hey

photo by Sarah Brockhaus

by John A. Nieves

 

 

Because it started in pepper spilled on a diner

table, this sad little opus was born grains

and grey. And I think of the pebbles that dull

the mower as they sleep in the grasses pushing

up toward your sun. And your front lawn is

sloping and your driveway is filling with family

cars and the stains of routine. Because the coffee

we drank once, the beers we raised once, have found

their way through us and to us are shades.

Because the noise of forgetting for you is barking

and yelling and heavy footfalls on stairs that have

never been still. But here in my quiet, memory slips

slower and the lilt of your laughter is easy

to pull. There are numbers in spreadsheets and over-

full voicemails but the fog hiding the sidewalk is

not concerned. So I write to the you who I think

could still hear this, twenty-five years back

 

and eating some toast, to say that you knew how

the hum of old neon could tumble pastoral on worn

parking stops. And maybe they’ve crumbled and maybe

they’ve held up but they said you are here to us when

the city said goodnight. Before stock phrases entered

mass circulation, before life became a branded affair,

we’d mock the nothing creeping up in the morning

and swear to each other we’d get out of there. From this

distance yesterday can still see tomorrow, but from there

today plays on repeat. So I write from this lost night

in a long closed-up diner to say I remember when leaving

piled up to the ceiling and I climbed and you napped

and we ended this far apart, but the sound of you

laughing still lives like a painting of some vacation

we never took. If you ever need it, just write me

a message. I’ll send it with napkins and a cracked

yellow mug with the tinier wish that this is enough.

 

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