I Drove Past Your Building
drove past our old building tonight. someone put a plant on the windowsill. you'd never have remembered to water it.
I took the long way home tonight, which is to say I drove past your building. I don't do this. I did it once.
The light in 4B was off. It would be, it's 2am, and anyway someone else lives there now. I know that. I sat across the street with the engine ticking as it cooled and looked at a window that hasn't been ours in two years.
Somebody had put a plant on the sill. A real one, or a good fake. You'd never have remembered to water it. I used to do that. Sundays.
I'm not sad about you, exactly. I think I'm sad about being someone who waters a plant. About where all that careful steady wanting went, once the person it was pointed at had gone.
A car came up behind me and I drove on. Of course I drove on.
I keep wanting to ask whoever lives there now one thing. Whether the radiator still knocks at 2am the way it did. Whether they've learned to sleep through it.
What I don't know is who I'd be asking for.
Did this one stay with you?
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