August.

She’s sitting on the toilet

in a Mexican restaurant.

August in California.

A seascape mural on the walls.

Someone’s knocking on the door.

Occupied, we may have called out.

I’m straddling her

as she wills herself to pee.

It always takes a while.

I know this.

I keep her company.

She likes to just rest there a minute.

I like her resting.

A habit of making public-private

spaces our home.

I’m crying a little.

We’ve spent the day in the sun,

in the sand,

in the ocean.

Skin brined.

A pitcher of happy-hour-margaritas.

She’d met someone that summer.

Days earlier, a parking lot:

She’s my sun, she’d said.

You’re my moon, she’d said,

and plucked three flowers from a plant,

one for each,

as I watched her joy

bend my sadness

toward a feeling I couldn’t name.

All my cards thrown into the air,

every notion of love,

just there,

orbiting us

in a muraled bathroom.

Do you still love me, I say.

Baby, you’re just drunk, she says,

and wipes a tear

from my face

as she pees.

I laugh.

Look at us drunk and happy

and very much in love

on a summer day

with nowhere to be.

But who are we.

Now?

Here in a bathroom

With my heart

Hanging out

Could I?—

or could I let her go

I didn’t know.

We’d been sitting

on the beach, talking,

mindlessly perfecting

the breasts

of a sand mermaid

as my father and stepmother

washed up on the shore

the little cove we’d swam to.

We stomped out the mermaid,

breasts first,

embarrassed by just how gay

two women

on a beach could be.

Then yes to tequila.

Days later, a flight back

to New York,

we exit the airport in Dallas

on our layover

to eat grits

and try on cowboy hats.

We miss the plane.

Watch it pull away,

waive to the pilot,

laughing

at what those grits cost us.

Next flight, we end up

in two aisle seats.

We’re weeping before

the plane takes off.

Limbs swiveled into the aisle,

flight attendants climbing past,

as we assure one another

that somehow, some way,

We’ll make this last,

no matter the outcome,

we will stay

in each other’s lives.

Robert and Patti.

We will be smiling

at one another’s weddings.

Maybe that moment,

that intention,

true in that there moment,

gone and yet reverberating,

is enough.