Blake HC Mihm

Last Week I Was Thinking of You, and I Confess I Am Thinking of You Still

Outside the Kroger's is a tulip poplar which I know because its sherbet flowers are in full bloom. At all other times of the year it is nothing more than a tree to me. I recognize your car by its license plate, the desultory way the letters and numbers bleed into a slick puddle across hot pavement. It is an evening during the week so I am sure it's busy inside, that there is a single clerk overseeing the line of self check-outs, meaning I could make eyes at you while I pass the four-dollars-a-pop Sumatra oranges off for regular old navels. I wouldn't be clever enough to think of anything to say if our carts bumped while you pondered if it's a creamer or half-and-half week, but in produce I would ogle the ripe pears before settling for feeling up the citrus

Three weeks ago after your shed burnt down I asked if the loss of all those cans of paint thinner and vintage weed trimmers might mean you have room for me in your life.

I can't take anything else on right now, you had said. These insurance agents, they're all over me.

As if the insurance agents and I had something in common.

I tuck a flower under your wiper blade but two steps later, turn heel and press the budding bloom into my back pocket alongside a book of matches and a crushed napkin. At the post office I confess I do not know your address and the postmistress says she will try to find you before the flower melts.

What happens, I ask, if she doesn't make it in time?

Nothing, she replies. Maybe that's for the best.