[name] - SERENA WEI '30

When I see you I think of

that boy from college years ago:

I’ve seen his old college journals, the space between

lines filled with pressed flowers from the corners of campus.

I’ve heard stories about the brevity of his wit, 

or how he dipped his head each time he were polite

His father eloping with another woman,

mirrors that fogged up with water marks,

Aged pages of books, coffee stains on

cuffs, the faded polish on the desk,

Every passage in his favorite book, marked margins

stained with blots, crammed with uneasy cursive.

I remember the way he forgot

to dot every other i until I reminded him, 

Compilations of envelopes

on the table he’d never read,

The robin that he’d feed in the park

two blocks away on the way to class,

Late night musings and early mornings

spent away in the reading room.

I’ve never known my husband like that

aristocratic man from his humanities class,

or the girls from the school across town,

or the first friend he’d made.

I’ve never heard him talk to me

over a cup of tea in a restaurant,

never shared the intimacy of a secluded spot

with a book and shared lecture.

never learned how his mother fared after the scandal.

I lived off signs of a corrected sentences,

a new pen, the attention he paid to the

spring blossoms after winter break,

The way the edges of his coat frayed

frayed like the end of December,

those misty eyes cloud at the sight of

the post office on a Sunday morning

The way a dorm bed could fit more than one,

the table with two cups, a pair in sight

A spot for two in a corner of an encyclopedia,

a word exchanged by bird, a night with someone

I really make me wish I’d never married him