Secret Names

Michael  McNeilley

       my eyelids bang open and I wake sudden as summer
       fire spreads down dry arroyos -
       her lovely nameless face floats above me in the heat -
       a dissipating cloud of dream
       that rims a thought that will not clear.

       but the lost green eyes and hair not red but
       not blonde her smile the old smile back in place
       draw down icons of memory -
       through the freckles that spread wild
       to the line across her breasts where freckles end

       and I can see in the dark - the whiteness of the curve
       below untouched by sun -
       the suprising pubic manicure
       shaved small in the shape of a heart.
       she speaks my name
       I cannot speak hers.

       and I roll in my sheets chilled but sweating
       out the sudden details gusting through -
       the alcoholic memory of that first evening rush
       from bar to bed pulling desperate relevance
       from every article and consonance from every vowel -
       a trident siren sea of memories welling up
       from nowhere incomplete.

       and I try again but nothing still -
       no trick will bring her name to mind
       not even her first name a name that could have been
       a man's or woman's name I know that much but
       not Chris not Terry.

       though the endgame memory returns of course -
       whistles up unwanted again
       of lying hopeless on frozen
       apartment balcony concrete drunk
       against Valentine's bitter cold - someone
       saying come in come in you'll freeze -
       watching through the glass
       her leave the party with some unknown
       unnamed one - I never saw her after that

       until years later
       back in town on business -
       by bluff chance in a bar downtown
       we had lunch together at the rail
       and I ate and slowly nodded through
       the story of her latest man -
       the one who could have made her
       happy at last arrested the night before
       at the airport
       their little package gone all lost.

       what happened to us -
       you and me she asked and we both
       knew what but not why -
       no sense attempting the why of it
       or the inevitability - not before not then or now -
       more of the secrets we hold away from ourselves.
       all lost and I left two drinks for her and flew
       away secure in my own developed relevance
       uplifted if brought low.
      
       ten years later those redlined eyes
       still endlessly familiar -
       I turn and fight my way back down to sleep
       knowing her name is there somewhere in secret
       locked deep in some internal file.
       dreading now the dawn too soon to come -
       the vast undertakings of a Tuesday or Wednesday -
       slamming eyes shut in the hope of no dream
       back down the corridor into sacred darkness
       before the sun burns its inevitable hole
       in the blanket of night
       and flames the whole damned sky
       with morning.