Vanilla flowers

Her neck was warm, smelled of Vanilla Flowers. Was that before we made love,
or after we showered together? I can’t remember. Was it after I saw her reading out loud
in the park from a red notebook, her pen suspended above the words? Her voice carried
like a song. Or was it after we kissed hello, both cheeks, two business women meeting in
the café? Or it could have been the day when we found each other on the city bus and,
looking across the aisle, compared haircuts and handbags and asked each other how we
had been doing since high school. Was that before we knew for sure, but suspected, the
burning that came after? And the cool water over long wet hair flowing down her back
while we soaped each other, slowly. I can’t remember. The park and the red notebook
might have been from years ago when I followed her as she left her house next door, in
the pre-dawn hours, to watch the sun rise over the lake, or feed the ducks crackers, or sit
on the grass and write while I stood behind trees, watching, smelling the air, thinking of
her neck. I told non-factual date locations to my parents while I spent the evening hiding
in our parked car in the street watching her lighted window hoping for a view of her red
hair and praying my father would not need to take the car out for more beer. Did I really
do that? If it happened it was definitely before we both laughed and swore off lipstick and
men and I began to wonder if she was looking at the scarf draped over my breast or at the
shape of me under the knit dress. That was probably following the time on the bus and at
the café having coffee. After we made love and after we showered together did we text
from the bus home, friend on Facebook, and email before bed using love words we would
never share with others? The next day at work, alone in my cubicle, my screensaver a
globe turning in the dark of my windowless hole, I held my phone in my lap and texted
again and again. She did not answer. On to the next person—that was her in high school
too, one boy after another, but I thought it was boys, a category not right for us, and after
we made love and before we showered together, she would be changed. Was she
changed? After work and before I got on the bus home alone, I bought Vanilla Flowers
and sprayed it on my neck, trying to recapture.