I Never Went Back to You
By Steven Riel
i.
Thoroughbred freckles dappled your deltoids
as if you were model & classic statue in one
in the slanted, amber sunbeams
those autumn afternoons.
I marveled at your grown-up realm
where you lined the path to your bed
with stacked newspapers.
Your bathroom’s blaring
fluorescence I even embraced
because it spot-lit my waking dream
as I’d lather your nape, gape behind your milky back.
*
Before those weekends,
my undergraduate abdomen had glistened
each solitary Saturday night
in my run-down apartment in the city
where I kicked back damp sheets—
my scrubbed ears a small-town audience
held captive while the upstairs neighbor, a booted clone,
& his first trick of the weekend
pounded hard & bellowed
just above my ceiling,
making my whole being blush.
As a boy, I’d spend Lent studying Jesus’ doweled feet,
the tear-drop gash in his side. The body of
Christ stuck to my tongue & stayed stuck—
as if I needed a tutor
before I could savor melting Godiva
despite the martyrs.
*
Your fingertip beguiled me
(I thought I was ugly & undeserving—
I was nineteen) on that velvety sofa
as the theme of your slideshow
drifted towards skin. Mine
pulsed for the sequel. All I ever wanted:
creamy man older man bigger man muscled man,
but what came after easing off your wire glasses
four weekends in a row
wasn’t all I wanted after all.
ii.
I never went back to you—till tonight.
An idle Google search turns up a †
after your name. My mind staggers.
Then I track down your death date,
print the black & white yearbook photos
of you at twenty-one, pale & gangly,
in the back row with the Young Republicans,
your tweed jacket & the horn-rimmed glasses
sported by the other prep boys you bedded
(you bragged you bagged scores of them).
That lit-up look on your face I recall,
the kissable up-flip in your upper lip.
—Now I’m on a mission, hunt down
articles you authored, a color shot
of the modest memorial your rich
but restrained parents donated
to your alma mater, their online obituaries
lengthy because they were prominent
yacht- & golf-club Pilgrim-descended industrialists,
& so were you, their tersely mentioned,
previously deceased eldest scion,
the IIIrd, who spilled his seed. On me.
*
It wasn’t Love Story.
You kept miles away from “Love
means never having to say…,”
from introducing me to the mansion,
where even if I’d possessed a Main Line pedigree,
top-drawer manners, twill from J. Press,
& never, ever alluded to sunny afternoons,
by contrast Jenny Cavalleri’s fiery red dress
would have seemed a flair fit to be married.
iii. Mayflower Cemetery
because your brother didn’t answer my letter
because I figured that like my brother
an unmarried & childless son
you’d be buried beside your parents
because at first I didn’t see
your cutting-board-sized stone
because it was that day each October
when a whole generation of leaves lets go
because I now know you stopped breathing
during the first wave of our plague
because I would have held you lightly
as you threw up or coughed
would’ve stood like a wet boulder at your funeral
whether your kin liked it or not
because to rip back dandelions & crabgrass
& scrape with my nails broken pine needles
filling in the letters of your name,
I will kneel six feet from you
year after year.
Steven Riel (he/him) is the author of one full-length collection of poetry, Fellow Odd Fellow (Trio House Press), with another forthcoming from Lily Poetry Review Books in the fall. His most recent chapbook Postcard from P-town was published as runner-up for the inaugural Robin Becker Chapbook Prize.