How it happens that you’ve fathered a child and it shouldn’t matter to me when I find out via social media
Poetry by Emily Davidson
I.
Saint John, 2005.
You want to hike, debate, lob frozen pizzas off your back deck.
You play guitar, wear flip-flops with the bottoms worn through.
Tan dark in summer.
You get that haircut, listen when I talk, walk with a hitch in your stride like a little boy.
No, I say when people ask. No, we’re just friends.
2.
Star Wars night, because at twenty-one you’ve never seen it.
We sit too close, and then we walk, because you are all pent-up about something.
You confess in a rush, your reasons much more noble than mine.
At first I like your face, your forearms. I don’t realize I will wear this moment like a coat.
3.
Cape Split Trail, Nova Scotia.
Scrambling behind you and my father, I catch my ear on a blunted tree branch.
Later in Wolfville, outside the church where my parents were married, you take a photo,
enthralled by the blood congealing in my scapha.
4.
Seven months in.
A street near your house, no traffic – we are in the middle.
Our breath, the snap of dark, the sound of winter boots.
We try to talk about what we want and fail. I am your obstacle, you are mine.
5.
Your basement, 2006.
I am crying accidentally; you haven’t made eye contact in weeks.
We talk for some time before coming to it.
We are surprised, like people breathing after a long dive. Or maybe the other way around.
Yes, we say. Done. Yes.
6.
Time.
I am single always, you never.
I still borrow you – and there he was, with a gerbera daisy. Oh yes, I went there with my ex.
I am pitiful, like people who can’t recognize they are tone deaf. Always borrowing.
7.
My last e-mail to you, February 2010. You would like Vancouver during the Olympics – chaos energy.
I hope you are well. I’m not sure you check this address anymore.