Transactive Memory

We met in a bar the width
of a hallway leading nowhere.
You asked me my sign in a neutral
tone. I covered my mouth
with a placemat when I yawned.
I read to you from a book
of burnt-out matches.

You said you didn't want to put
labels on it, but I'd just bought
a label maker. You looked at a fern.
You opened the fridge. You described
your past as a reluctant ode
to Shoppers Drug Mart. I fell
asleep in a pile of sporting goods.

For years I worked under the table,
that one from the phrase “farm to table,”
while you wrote a thesis on transit anger.
We argued like agnostics resorting
to prayer. You asked me, “When does
The Wire get good?” I felt complicit
in your library fines.

You drifted into your thirties
like a polar bear on an iceberg.
I wouldn't stop yelling “enhance!”
at the view from the kitchen
window. At night I translated
my sorrow bump by bump
from the braille of a bucket of Lego.

I pursued an aesthetic impulse
into the suburbs. The train slid
over the rooftops like a runaway
attic suite. I curled up inside my fear
like a tuba player in his instrument.
The sky stripped off its blue negligée.
A voice told me where I was.

You waited with your blinker on
for the intersection to clear.
I tended to the campfire of my vices.
On a road trip, you vanished
into the space between rest stops.
When you came back, you spoke
authentic American boredom.
You buried bulbs with a tiny shovel.

You scrubbed the floor like a storm
erasing the names from a map.
I invested my bingo winnings
in abstract pornography.
We fought in parking lots
where pigeons shuffled around
like hungry slippers.

The campus, at night, was roofed
in blue light. The rain seemed
to fall from a stadium ceiling.
We whispered our WiFi password
to the flowers. At midnight, a thousand
coupons expired in a drawer and ivy
climbed the walls like slow, green flame.