“The Last Time”

“I feel like a cat on a hot tin roof!”
“Then jump.”
-Tennessee Williams

I looked over at you the last time we were together.
I hadn’t noticed before how your hair sticks up right at the
back, just a few sprigs, right there, on —do they call that a nape?
No, it’s the crown. You
put another cigarette to your mouth, and
deciding it was too much effort to smoke another one,
you placed it between the Bic and the watered-down
glass of iced tea that seemed to be leaking from the base,
the sweat of condensation’s brow running
to find refuge under yesterday’s Times and my copy
of Lolita.

“You shouldn’t wear that shirt” was the last time I saw you.
You took it off to humor me and put on an old gray
Hanes tee. “Is this better?” was the last time we spoke.
We were war and peace in a single bed—
fighting to hang on to one another, making sure the other
approved always, giving grins out of spite,
wanting not to go there—that place where the others
always found themselves, standing on a ledge with
ten toes gripping the pigeon-painted awning.

I jumped.

Below I found that we were ineffectual,
like the one belt loop on a pair of jeans you should
just rip off because it’s not attached
yet you leave it there. Because it’s still hanging there.
You put your belt on around it and go about your
day, making a note to yourself that you should just
go ahead and invest in some new Levi’s.

After a trip to the store,
I stopped by the café to warm up with a cup.
And there you were on the scratched up table,
yesterday’s Times, disheveling a ring of perfect water.

“The Last Time” appeared in the 2007 issue of The Coffeehouse Papers at Lambuth University, Jackson, TN.