xi.

…and i cannot decide tonight which medallion to wear, as i hurry to get ready (the less the more, with you,) and stick my head out the bathroom door to tell you honey, it’ll be five minutes so go ahead and have that beer, and you gimme that cockeyed smile all the while should i wear the circular tibetan hand-crafted present from my father, m' lux, as a graduation present on telegraph street after we’d stolen the champaign from the reception the gift i know he’d paid too much for, to hold the moment, to hurry us women along, whispering lifetime advice to my boyfriend, precious syllables of women and jewelry, my mother and i giggle, and we go to find the car, the parking garage…

it is not my newest necklace (jewelry only since that faraway weekend have i begun to wear only since those tipsy, wine-induced days in napa, sonoma, and i-80 in between) and it is neutral; the green in my longer, bronze medallion compliments both mine eyes and my shirt, and i am longing for it tonight. so on it goes.

we are at this house in berkeley and there is a big, sticky dog, golden lab and something or other (i do not, i’ve told you, care much for dogs, but i am trying) and a fireplace. i know enough people just close enough, fellow alumni i have met after we all left that strange place, that strange home i had once in my life that already seems so far away, and i am asking about neena’s boyfriend kenny and i am asking paymon about how his year is going and somewhere during the teacher-talk of these entrenched youth in a society for youth teaching the ghettos of america he stops getting me beers somewhere during this teacher-talk i am asking about everyone else and associations of whom i have never met and i get an offhanded remark about my being gone about where i’ve been again? must have been told a hundred times and yet it is some land not here and thus will continue to forget and then she cuts us off and begins again about something or other remark in a diversity session they’ve had today.

all the while i am looking down i occasionally and during lulls in the conversation finger this necklace and i do not then remember (but now i remember) the early-morning banging of their hammers on this copper my early-morning enthusiasm for the picturesque turkish district my early-morning escape from one opportunistic and one sympathetic bosnian ticket-checker thatthat sound more than scent which is supposedly the sense the most-closely linked to memory is what sarajevo was and what this medallion is and of what nobody is asking
:and (why) asking (is) anymore (i) want:
i shrug.