memo

I remember it rained all day, the day we met. Heavy unforgiving drops smacking on the sidewalk. I thought about sandbags and life-rafts. I sagged under the awning nursing on my rain speckled cigarette, waiting for it to stop. I had rain all over my face, or maybe I was crying. Then like a goddess, on a chrome chariot, you rode up splashing, cracked a smile at me and said, “I love this weather.” I smoked another cigarette while watching you chain the polished bicycle to a lamppost. When you spun around, your long coat swooped out, and I was sure you had wings. I don’t remember the first thing I said to you, only what I was thinking, “who is this person?”

You remember it another way, the rain had ceased and an October sun sparkled on wet pavement, the dark clouds fled to the eastern horizon, chased away. You say you weren’t wearing a coat, okay, but I don’t remember a gorilla suit, you'd think I would. You also remember that I was inside the coffee shop, sunk into a couch with my back to the window, perhaps bullshitting with a mutual friend, Adam. You say you brought your bike inside, because that morning you had forgotten your lock, that when you first saw me, I wasn’t looking back, or all that,  You remember it was a few days later, when the sun was hot my cheeks, that I first spoke to you, “I love this weather.”

Or was it you, that loved the sun, and I the rain?