Summer, 1995 by John Freeman

Summer, 1995

Three rooms, sight unseen, rented from a nurse and

her husband, the floors filthy, one working burner

on the stove. Every morning I left her behind

in bed, holding me with a fierceness

I did not recognize as desperation, because

both of us were blind, we had invented this,

the parenthesis of a day between lovemaking,

the meals cooked naked, novels read to each other

aloud, the slow walks to a train station, floating,

holding hands as if one of us might zeppelin

away if untethered, and the pain, a knife through

the chest, at departing for just a few days.

I had six jobs, one for a traffic planning

firm, Tom and I would drive in the dawn hours

to an intersection, lay hose, then count cars

through our hangovers as they rolled to a four-

way stop. Someone, somewhere, would use

this data to widen roads, erect new signs,

trim the summit ash and red oak, so drivers

could reduce their speed in time. Astonishing

to realize there was such a thing as too much

beauty. I was nineteen, I had another lifetime to

learn this, but all I could do then was stand

near the flame, and marvel at the blisters.