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On Sunday I drove two hours to the Cape to be there for KP, with whom I went to see Dirty Dancing at least 3 times when we were in high school, whose Dad died Thursday. Whom I remember at her house, when I was young and thin and not sure, how it worked in houses with Dads, and him coming up the stairs, stout and quiet, saying not much, calling her Ka.

I come in and I see KP, then her sister, and then her brother B, and then her mom, and then her Dad, laying with hands folded of course. The whole ride down I wish I could go Monday instead to the funeral, to hear B give the eulogy. B used to give me rides to see KP when she lived in New York, and he was always quiet, and funny, and sarcastic, which I love, and unfailingly polite, and nice. And once he came with us to the cabin and we all went running and he was himself. And he captains a nuclear sub now. He's my age, and KP is older.

In high school I thought I might have a little crush and I let this slip to KP who fixes it all up because B is as fantastically unsure as I am. A brief exchange happens on the bus, was it the bus really, but I think it was, and we are agreed to go to the sophomore dance together.

Nothing was much right at home that year. Did he know or not know? I never have asked. I had no dress and J. gave me hers from the year prior. White and lace and not really my taste but pretty in its right and I was thin enough to get into the size-small dress but too tall, but it had to do. Was I that awkward? I had my hair braided in two long rows, I had always wanted hair that would do that, and mine was always cut awful and short. Forced cuttings in someone's garage, I hated that. It just barely pulled into those braids. I don't know why it meant so much to me that those braids worked out but it did. It was something nice.

I remember B. in his suit, and sitting on leather seats in the back of someone's station wagon. And he was nice and polite and we danced and I was so nervous. I loved him because he was so good. But it wasn't like that either. I remember Pago Pago afterwards I think, and the great big table, and the nice friends who weren't really my friends, moreso his, but all nice to me. He pulled my chair out each and everytime. And I was so awkward and nervous. But I remember that my whole life. The sophomore dance with B., the beginning and end of any courtship, but the beginning of a long association with each other, mostly over the years through and because of KP.

I come to B. in the line up and I shake hands and we hug and I tell him how sorry I am and I think about how I love him, always did. We're a bit part in each other's lives, but I remember him at the sophomore dance, on that run that day, driving to NYC a couple of times I think. A couple of beers and a couple of Red Sox games and maybe a dance party gone wild at KP's one time when Sue, her wife, caught a third wind. We say its good to see each other and I mean it more than that and I think he does too and I can't be sure. But I want him to know, I see you. And I see you lost your Dad and I still love you, always did, always will, in our own way. I remember you and I remember your Dad coming up the stairs from the basement in the house you grew up in.

All week I keep writing this card to B in my mind, what I wish I could say to say I see you, and I see what you lost, and it matters. The comfort I wish I could give and can't. How I wouldn't mind it, if I had stayed late, and everyone had left, and B and I sat in the chairs lining the walls, with his Dad lying there, and if he wanted to put his head in my lap and cry a little, and I would not say anything but keep a hand on his shoulder, and then I would leave and he would leave and I would not be there for his eulogy in the morning, not be there for years, but still be pulling that one thread all the way through. He probably doesn't need me for any of that. But I would have been happy to do it.

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the truth is I went up, I
went in the truth is how it is at
four o'clock in the morning the truth is the
damp under the sink that you
ignore and the truth is
worthless and failure and the truth
is loved and
not chosen and the truth is a
tiny thread
hanging from your cuff caught
in a fist and
broken by a
snap of the wrist and the truth is
memory what you memorized what you knew
was written before you
wrote it the
truth is all the words are
still mine and the truth is worthless and
failure and the
truth is what you write and the truth is
its not written
and the truth is then you wrote it and the truth is
judgement and the grit on the sidewalks when the
snow melts away and the truth is
worthless
failure
not yet written.

Light

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A palm placed on a
window always waves
goodbye in the
twilight when you sing a
little song about
is it dark out or
is it light

its always steaming and
leaving your print on the glass an
etching of
where we were

walking home with it
all in your mind
the dusk gone to shade and shadow

lit now only by the
one yellow flower
cupped, in your hand.