Returning to a Moment
By Curtis Bauer
None of this surprises you now,
does it? I’m not sure I can know that,
I responded to myself.
Or I think I did.
I should have.
A friend told me to embrace
my disorientation here, to attend
to it and dwell in that state, make it
a daily practice, like walking,
like drinking coffee.
I’ve walked through this city
countless times these last five months.
Months ago, I couldn’t
distinguish Bulnes from Pueyrredón,
prostitutes from neighbors on Córdoba.
I was learning to walk
through the nuances of this city.
Everything has changed:
I push into the subte; my wife
still can’t buy tampons, women
think protest will change
something; hope, that lingering
scent jasmine blooms on a warm day,
but it dissipates
and I forget it ever existed.
I was surprised
when my friend told me she had cancer.
I thought then
I’d never not think of her.
Tonight Buenos Aires is a protest
in response to a recent murder:
a 14-year-old girl, pregnant, killed
by her 16-year-old boyfriend and buried
with his parents’ help in their backyard.
NiUnaMenos, Not One Less.
I haven’t thought of my friend
for the last month.
Maybe I’ve misplaced her,
like astonishment
that once joined me on my walks.
Can we always dwell inside
an unsettled state?
Early on I thought of her
as I explored. The night
I wrote her, her partner
responded, My heart’s heavy.
I have to tell you Jackie died last Friday.
Death, I expected hers . . .
but I thought I’d see her again,
have an opportunity to tell her
about surprises here losing luster.
I don’t know which way
to turn, how to understand
this. I had a stone
I was going to give her, but
I threw it into a pond and watched
the undulations calm,
erase the evidence
every ripple.