INTIMACY

The woman in the café making my cappuccino—dark eyes, dyed

red hair,

sleeveless black turtleneck—used to be lovers with the man I’m

seeing now.

She doesn’t know me; we’re strangers, but still I can’t glance at her

casually, as I used to, before I knew. She stands at the machine,

sinking the nozzle

into a froth of milk, staring at nothing—I don’t know what she’s

thinking.

For all I know she might be remembering my lover, remembering

whatever happened

between them—he’s never told me, except to say that it wasn’t

important, and then

he changed the subject quickly, too quickly now that I think about

it; might he,

after all, have been lying, didn’t an expression of pain cross his

face for just

an instant? I can’t be sure. And really it was nothing, I tell myself;

there’s no reason for me to feel awkward standing here, or

complicitous,

as though there’s something significant between us.

She could be thinking of anything; why, now, do I have the sudden

suspicion

that she knows, that she feels me studying her, trying to imagine

them together?—

her lipstick’s dark red, darker than her hair—trying to see him

kissing her, turning her over in bed

the way he likes to have me. I wonder if maybe

there were things about her he preferred, things he misses now

that we’re together;

sometimes, when he and I are making love, there are moments

I’m overwhelmed by sadness, and though I’m there with him I

can’t help thinking

of my ex-husband’s hands, which I especially loved, and I want to

go back

to that old intimacy, which often felt like the purest happiness

I’d ever known, or would. But all that’s over; and besides, weren’t

there other lovers

who left no trace? When I see them now, I can barely remember

what they looked like undressed, or how it felt to have them

inside me. So what is it I feel as she pours the black espresso into

the milk,

and pushes the cup toward me, and I give her the money,

and our eyes meet for just a second, and our fingers touch?