i remember

I want to hold her hand

As we walk down the alley

There is a foreign restaurant

We sit at an array of chairs waiting for a table
As the bar comes to life

“You’ll love Tibetan cakes”

The man beside us tells his friend
Loudly over the din

I had just told her how I had helped overturn

A recent academic appointment
Because candiate’s paper was some nonsense
About trees
Probably written by his overachieving parents

I had ruffled a lot of feathers

I’m not sure if she agreed with I had done
But I was proud of it

She put her arm around a lad next to her

He was too young for her,
But I was jealous

“What do you call an Irish bartender?”

She asked, joking,
“A butter Rucker!”
“Or a rudder buckler”

The underage boy gets up to join

His friends at the bar

She turns to me
I don’t get the joke I remember examining the art at the native shop
Round the corner
Telling the curator
The museum didn’t deserve the native works
They shouldn’t lose the context

I tell her I don’t get the joke,

“My parents enrolled me in a program when I was young
That tried teaching spelling, but the experimental method
Scrambled words not in syllables, which makes reading and hearing
Like dyslexia but I can’t do wordplay or word puzzles”

There is an exhibit downstairs I hope to show her afterward

I am not sure how I ended up with her on this cold night

She is bundled in her green woolen coat

And a sweater and scarf

I want to know what warm hides

Beneath

And I think of her warm skin

“In Tibet , you can get I began cakes for ten cents s!”
He yells over the din

They are starting to arrange the tables on

Outside on the sidewalk

The alley is empty
Wet

Lit by shop lamps

And old street lamps

The mist is rolling in