24 lines about...

Remember the picnic we took by the Charles, way too young to be eating brie without adults around?

Remember the time we got distracted watching the sunset from the parking garage, and the attendant barked at us for overstaying our ticket?

Remember the impulsive midwinter trip to Quebec, where we ate maple syrup on a stick and scared ourselves silly on the rickety toboggan run?

Remember the snowy field in the shadow of Mt. Bachelor where we tried to find a little privacy from your family—and, when that failed, the drive in the Vanagon to a turn-out in benighted aspen woods?

Remember all those bottles of homebrew that blew up in the basement of your Vermont place?

Remember how they told you to bring along a can of bug spray to “mace” me if I turned out to be creep?

Remember how the hot day of our first date ended behind a waterfall in a White Mountain stream, invisible to the world?

Remember a whole day shopping subterranean Indian groceries on First Ave for a feast we’d make on a miniature stove in what used to be someone’s 91st St. livingroom?

Remember cutting out dozens of hearts of all different colors and shades of red, and writing quotations on them, and giving them to me in a jar, and how I kept them until you sent word that you’d gotten married?

Remember the time you seduced me with mango roast chicken, only to retreat in fury two weeks later when I didn’t take your twisted ankle seriously?

Remember the night we were friends and you were heading home, but we stopped at the hammock for a minute and were something else by midnight?

Remember the night by Pout Pond with that champagne and all?

Remember how I rode my bike out to the rusted pickup desert in Arizona, watched the sun, cried, and etched your name in sandstone? Oh, I never told you about that.

Remember how we fought to the point of demolition at the head of the lift at Park City, then enjoyed the day more than ever, but it was too late?

Remember that time I found you at the airport, and really shot myself in the foot?

Remember that time we had a sudden dreamy drunken Christmas kiss, just before I went to the airport to shoot myself in the foot?

Remember how your grandmother forbade you to travel with me, but we went to Texas anyway, and swam to Mexico?

Remember the night we chewed pine needles under warm stars on the Vineyard and discovered we both dreamed of being astronauts?

Remember the igloo we made somewhere up above 12,000 feet? Wonder how long it lasted?

Remember how I watched the northern lights alone, but tried to send them to you through the ether?

Remember how it all started with a drive to Bennington in the middle of the night? Why on earth did we do that?

Remember how I told you about a crush twenty years ago, and you said you wanted to see me the next time you came east, and that was four years ago?

Remember the abandoned adobe shack in the town named after your family, where we chipped our names into the crumbling whitewash?

Remember how none of these are you, but all the unwritten ones might be?