As often as you’d visit with your aunt,
There was a chance she might hark back again,
Glad for the chance, as you were glad to listen:
The story’s happy ending was the telling.
As she came home one evening from the factory,
She sensed a man behind her at a distance
Which he kept, walking with a measured step
So as not to overtake her, nor fall back
And disappear behind the darkened buildings.
He stayed with her without his getting closer.
She was still young; this was quite long ago.
What could she do except continue on?
Her heels were worn—before she’d had the time
Even to break them in the proper way—
From walking from the building to the bus.
And at the corner stop he stood beside her;
It was a while before the bus arrived.
He was a man—no need to tell you that,
But she could hardly tell you more than that.
He wore a coat and hat, he was a man,
It was a matter of importance, that.
And when he spoke he was a courteous man,
Despite her never having known a man
Who spoke to her; despite—she does not say—
Her looks. Her acquiescent, homely face.
Which must have been what drew him to her, no?
He must have been just such a homely man,
Who asked if he might take the seat beside her.
And she declined to give him her permission,
As it was after dark.
And long ago.
But the light fills her eyes in the retelling.
And you are one to notice things, her favorite.
“There was a man who liked me,” she begins.
She pours the little cups half full of tea,
And stirs until the cubes of sugar melt,
Then pours in milk. And lovely scenes are painted
On the cups. This, too,
This too is long ago.
Now you alone recall that courteous man,
Aunt Mae’s one paramour, of whom she spoke
Admiringly, as if that word still meant
To view with wonder and surprise—not him, but
Herself with him, that once. “A man liked me,”
She’d say—setting out toast with sweet preserves—
With nothing like regret; but something like
A prism she suspended in the light
Of memory, that cast its rainbow colors
On the white napkins and the tablecloth,
A thing a girl your age was quick to notice:
The bright, small petals scattered in the snow.

Original appearance in Cimarron Review, Winter 2008.