what I wouldn't give

I hardly rememberthe details of you – except once I dreamed
you brought me a cup of coffee made thick
with cream, and once I blushed because all day
in Maelstrom – the bookstore of couches,
bounced checks, Henry, and me –
I stared at Picasso's Harlequin,
a little emptiness in my chest,
then realized when you walked in,
I had spent the day staring
at a younger, painted you. I:

am over thirty, kind.I've drunk the spoiled milk of tragedy
(death, death, death) enough to know
I simply want beauty, happiness,
and know it's not that hard to find –
See how that man helps the woman into her wheelchair?
How she topples, then doesn't?
See this single bougainvillea flower?
Do you hear that word,
bougainvillea,
how it loves your mouth? You

see with the small, smart eyesof bats, carry a kind of silence
like a door around you,
have three beating hearts in your chest,
will explain them, I guess,
if asked. I won't ask.

With you, Ithink there is no need to describe
my breasts, how these hips
can be traced down from my waist,
how that trip is like fog that turns waves
into sound, the wind so strong
your home twelve blocks away
doesn't exist. It doesn’t need to.

I have trouble loving,sometimes, what I love: public
transportation, a tea kettle’s whistle,
the dark and how
it always comes. I am naive
(often by choice), have recurring dreams,
don't shave my underarms,
never studied economics.

You appear like a star(suddenly just there),
pull on the small holes in your T-shirt,
stuff the insides of your shoes
with other people's secrets,
don't know my name.
(It is Nancy.)
My thrifty landlord bought a new furnace
when I moved in. He didn't want me to be cold. You are
beautiful, he says. I mean it,
I am eighty-seven, I have no reason
to say that, except to say it.

I know this hardlymakes sense. But I want to ask you this:
Can I know you more? Or know you less?

[Nancy Krygowski, 'This Hardly Makes Sense', from Velocity]