Nineteen

The holiday itself I don't remember
Smoked into gray dreams like much of that year

but the day after New Year's
I jumped out of my friend's car,
without saying goodbye,
forgetting a green glass bubbler and a silver feather necklace
underneath the passenger seat.
I dashed down the block just in time to catch the late Chinatown bus
from Philly to New York City
I arrived in the darkness
and I stumbled off the bus
into several boxes overflowing with unpronounceable vegetables

Sam was waiting there
in a heavy suede coat
He went with me back to Matt's parents' brownstone
where shimmering white wine
and baked chicken
and crunchy cauliflower
and every man I had ever been in love with
were all waiting for me.

It was an exercise in awkwardness
like much of that year.
We got drunk
We probably ate too quickly
and left the house again
to go, I don't know where.
Where does a group of drunk, awkward nineteen year olds go
on a freezing January night in Manhattan?

The rest of the evening hazes back into a gray smoke
the tall, sad trees of the dark park,
a long subway ride where no one touched
as much as they wanted to
a train flying off into the starry sky,
and the incriminating evidence,
an abandoned apple
still sitting on the roof.