What I Forgot

                            “something leaves its resting place…. I do not know what it is, but I can feel it mounting slowly; ...I can hear the echo of great spaces traversed.” Proust

When I dropped him off at “Departures,”

I might as well as have been biting down

on that ‘petite madeleine’:

car exhaust and tires swishing dull February

snow against new snow flaking, flew me back

to childhood’s sweet sizzling grease, fried chicken

mom made every August for my birthday.

Suddenly too warm, I pulled away

from the tow-zone curb, steered into

the parking garage gray-slabbed

like the cave-muffled rocks avalanching

my last night’s dream, on our last night,

his birthday, not the smooth cascading

as when we slid along mountain shale and kept

climbing, unafraid. I climbed the escalator,

then stopped, hesitant, wanting more

than our car-door final kiss, but what to say

when I find him at the terminal

thinking we’ve already parted –

approaching the United gate, I see him engaged

in conversation with someone

he could turn easily

into a new friend. If someone

were to take my picture now, it would

look like the photo of my great Aunt,

choked in an awkward frock, a timid girl

stunned against smiling; it would become

just another memento, pearl-gray like

that February rehearsed during this one

because another man has asked

for my hardest memory: 

from what distance did I watch him

walk down the jetway and fade,

watch myself not call out to him,

watch him not ever turn around.

I felt the same scratchy heat

of roof shingles in summer

when I used to crawl out 

my bedroom closet window.

I had forgotten:

I used to like watching jets go by.

Jackie White is the translations editor for RHINO, an assistant prof of English, Latin/a studies, and women's studies, and a native Illinoisan with wanderlust and great Sox pride. She’s published in ACM, Slant, Folio, and Blackwater.