Jacklyn Call Gabe

He was still drunk when he wrote it-
Slouched on one elbow in his mother’s kitchen,
Sharpie bleeding through the white lace tablecloth,
the number in a lopsided heart
that was loose at the tip–
A note the size of a child’s palm,
triple-stapled to the pole at the corner
of Divine and Market
with the staccato of nothing-to-lose.
He guessed at the spelling,
wrote it with a y like the girl from his high school
band, hot as a French horn,
her legato, his libido–
He guessed almost everything about her.
Honestly couldn’t describe her face,
hoped she’d turn right when she left the building
to catch the 66, buy a scratcher at Tak,
hustle to hot yoga, light a spliff–
whatever, anything, just turn–
He had shattered almost everything that
wasn’t handed to him broken,
arms laced with scars from jagged edges.
She looked him in the eye, strummed
the curve of her hip against his thigh
(the bar too crowded
to avoid these duets)
She told him her name
And for a moment he mattered
to someone other than God
who was not that much fun on a Saturday night.
He sleeps it off at Mom’s.
She does not see the note
He rejoins invisibility
She does not remember his touch.
An alternate coda:
She wakes, bleary and dry-mouthed,
vibrating with loneliness,
goes down to buy a coffee she cannot afford

at the corner where the universe
has left her a sign