I felt that I needed to record the moment I first fell in love,
the instant I claimed you as my soulmate.
But which moment?
Was it the day we met nervously on a dock in your favorite park,
the one overlooking the marina, to struggle through Spanish verbs?
Jugar, conocer, leer, dormir.
It could have been the night you left for Missoula the second time,
when I entwined myself in your blanket with the stubbornness of a child.
Or was it the evening you drove to my house and we stood under the eaves
in the pounding rain, because I wanted to keep you all to myself?
There were a thousand times I fell in love with you,
each drawing me in deeper. Then a thousand times
we broke apart. A thousand times the rift between us widened.
There was an April evening when I called you from the staircase
with crocodile tears choking my voice.
The bright morning you shimmied up a fir tree in the forest,
too high for me. You crowed out from above, not knowing I was
walking home quickly, footprints filled with anger.
There was the night in my car you whispered, you bitch,
and slammed the dashboard with your open palms.
After a while, it is hard to know which came first and which came last.
Difficult to know what the difference is between falling
in love and out of love. Both are types of stumbling, grasping at air,
and hoping that something will catch you.