How this begins

Thrums he does, thrums like waves breaking, falling over each other on their way to his feet, but who can blame them.

Up along the street the maples look awkward in their new dresses, billowing in the traffic gusts. Everything has to begin. This is how this begins.

Later we’ll recall this moment, though I won’t speak of his clavicles and he’ll not mention my bottom lip. He’s trying to find some way to offer me a strawberry from the bunch he picked on his way to work and I’m trying to find some other word for clavicle but am distracted by his full-throated approach to wearing a t-shirt.

There are strawberry seeds under his fingernails. Tonight, falling asleep, a hand near his face on the pillow, he’ll smell the strawberries and the green smell of the plant where he plucked the fruit, where he shucked the strawberries before putting them in his mouth. He will remember my bottom lip.

We won’t agree. He’ll think it was a hot day, summer finally giving in. I’ll remember mostly the breeze through the open door, how spring just kept hanging around.

This will be the moment he liked me the least, but I liked him the most. He thought I was a snob. I thought he was dumber than he looks.

He will kiss me, outside at a table, leaning down to me as I look up, suspicious of a man who kisses me so soon and kisses me in a café.

He’ll wonder what comes next. I’ll wonder what just happened.

He won’t know I am on my way to therapy. That I was going to tell my therapist I am tired of longing for longing. Tired of making up stories about strawberries.