High Five
‘She’s fucked her way through half of this town.’
I thought
Marveling at the sheer quantities of ‘how little’ and ‘how much’ I know
Still
Like the clothing stuffed closets
from when she gained those 30 pounds
There’s a mystery there
and I’m a sixty year old woman pulling the reading glasses up from my chest
and settling in
She’s fucked me.
Never by myself, not that I can remember anyways
I don’t know what to do with myself
where women are involved
There are things I can’t do to myself
How could I play pretend on her?
with no distractions, anyway
I want to ask her if anyone really loves her
but that’s a stupid question
I wonder about it
She worries about it
neither of us ultimately give a shit about it
after a few glasses of wine
Once she told me about this time
She showed up, pretending to be drunk
at her neighbors’ apartment
In Chasing Amy they call it a ‘finger trap’
But we say the Eiffel Tower
and shout ‘high five, high five, high five’
I never forgot the visual
but I did forget the context of the joke
and tend to make its reference around her boyfriend now
Such is ‘her’ that she doesn’t miss a beat
I can’t keep up, and mostly I don’t mind
‘Something is so severely wrong’
I thought
and still think
When I don’t see her for a while
She’s around me now, wherever she physically is
like a warning signal
that people don’t always mean what they feel
that gluttony for people exists
that I can love something
after I think its horrible
that I can be horrible
that I don’t really know what horrible is
And half this town,
the other half, I mean
doesn’t know what it’s missing.
