It is fifty degrees, and the windchill makes it harsher to wear the same clothes over and over. I am listening to Possibly Maybe, it played last night too. Sometimes, sometimes.

         The community garden is untended, everything’s browned in the oven since summer. old dried-out corn husks are strewn across the mulch. I consider basket weaving, but upon further inspection they’ve rotted just enough to fall apart when touched, and they’re not mine anyway. Instead, I am sitting under a crate myrtle, or maybe a Japanese maple. I would have known the difference two years ago, or asked somebody who knows everything. I AM hogging both ashtrays even though I forgot my fake cigarettes. I’m wearing shoes that don’t really suit me, you suggested they looked like they’d belong to an eleven-year-old boy with almost-cool parents. He’d wear them to sneak off with their real cigarettes.

         There are three younger gay men sitting on the grass with an old woman. I know the grass is wet because I’d tried to sit right where they were an hour ago; I sank a few inches into the mud, wetting my jeans that were already damp from my water-logged bicycle seat. I weighed if it made a difference. They were high and dry however, and I think two of them were dating, though I couldn’t figure out who without making my eavesdropping obvious through pretending to read the book you lent to me. Two of the men left briefly to buy drinks from the corner store. The man remaining sat a little taller and asked the older woman how she was feeling, sympathetically. She said, “I’ve been better,” but I assume he misheard her, shrugged “That’s good.”

         She returned the question; he told her he’s been feeling more hopeful for the future than he did in high school. The woman pressed for clarification, she was feeling generous and it was clear he wanted to talk. his pre-political angst and disorganized emotional anguish went away as soon as he got a job and got busy, and he didn’t understand how she was so happy in her retirement. She looked over at me like I was taking the B-reel of their conversation; I was embarrassed but she seemed relieved.

 The sun shifted and I lost the cover of the myrtle/maple. The older woman’s company returned, each clutching a single tallboy of cheap beer. On my bike ride home, I realized she might have been that guy’s mother if they’d spoken to each other less like they’d just met. It couldn’t be ruled out.

         I passed a girl I’d kind of been in love with a while ago clipping flowers from the yards of expensive houses with hair-cutting shears. She was with someone I don’t know, and there were sundrops beginning to wilt in their hair. They weren’t really talking to each other, which I was glad was typical. The last time I saw her, I was rigid the whole time replaying how I’d left a paper crane she’d made on the bar by mistake. We were en route to a birthday party where we stared at each other out of the corners of our eyes for a few hours and went home. The last time we were in contact, she sent me a playlist and asked for my mailing address, and I agonized so intensely over my response that I never actually said anything. It’s in my nature. She didn’t reach out again.    

I came home to someone else who doesn’t know my mailing address. A best friend stopped by with a brilliant purple bouquet of forget-me-nots, she apologized that they looked like they could’ve been fake even though they weren’t. She had extra left over from the elaborate valentine’s day surprise she’d been planning all day for my downstairs neighbor. We listened in on their exultation – exaltation? – through the floor. You talked about nature writing, I said I’d like to try. You said I love you for the first time a few hours later right before going to sleep, looking at the ceiling, or maybe with your eyes closed.

Observation, navel-gazing