Schooner

It is five years from now.

I am sitting at a small round table

in a room filled with small round tables.

It is Sunday morning.

I am with a friend.

We are discussing failed relationships.

Espresso blackens my words.

I lift cup to my lips

and flare my nostrils.

I begin telling my lie:

“Rounding out of the mouth of the Penobscot

into the Atlantic, leaning over the

gunwale of a schooner

chin down to wind and slap of sea

across cheek and glasses,

the late May wind blowing open rain slicker

and setting to my chest

a gray Atlantic wetness

frothing chill and bluster

—I was going Down East, heading to Bar Harbor.”

I will give no reason why I was on the boat.

I have told this lie so many times before

that now even I believe it. But this time

I will add you into the lie.

How you walked the deck with me

and stood by my side, an eternity of gull squawk in our ears.

And I will conjure a wave swamping the deck

and tell how you kept me from going over the side.

How weather turned to warm silence

and we rowed a dory

to a deserted island

and set rocks in fire

and lobsters in seaweed

and let our song rise under the full moon.

And I will not speak of your depression.

Or the wilderness of your face.

And I will forget the stillness of your back to me,

And the bills and your accusations of infidelity.

And the twenty times I told you that I am not your father.

And I will never remember my faults.

The lie will become perfect.

And the only truth will be

that I did love you once.