May/December

Tricia Gates Brown

Word Count 191

Looking from you to me,

hotel clerk doesn’t see the man 

I see, as you fumble 

with water, pain pills

(your back, a grid of frayed wires). 

Reservation lists one queen. 

We’ve had directness: 

So, are you her ... father?

(That was the bank clerk.)

So, what’s your relationship?

(That was the doctor.)

Encounters you prefer not to 

remember, though we laugh it off. 

I hope they don’t arrest us, you say,

our bags now on the floor, 

taut, white sheets pulled back

on the bed.

Head cradled on a pillow, your features

are still the middle-aged man I remember. 

Wizard in the classroom,

playful at deconstruction

(or destruction, perspective depending)

gesturing like a tangle of clothes hangers

unforgettable.

Sometimes with eyes closed

I make love to that younger man

because he is my age 

because he is you, 

same gravelly voice whispering

Goodnight, my dearest. 

Different cadence, though, 

different energy. 

Office floor, no bed,

books and papers everywhere akimbo,

upper-story window uncovered 

so oaks peek in—since fantasies are meant to be

illicit. Not that I thought of it back then. 

Not that I would tell you now,

except perhaps in a poem.

*

Tricia’s poems have appeared in Portland Review, GEEZ Magazine, and The Winnow, among other publications, and her debut novel Wren won a 2022 Independent Publishers Award Bronze Medal. By trade, she is an editor and co-writer, mainly working for the National Park Service and Native tribes. She also writes a column at Patheos.com, ‘About Religion, Doubt, and Why They Matter.' In her free time, she relishes the four-legged menagerie on the Oregon farm where she resides.