Anniversaries of Autumn	Download PDF Version
ALAN SOLDOFSKY
Published in The Gettysburg Review - Vol. 16: Number 2, Summer 2003
So much for the days I can't remember . . . or rather, should recall when their numbers come up as they do, because weeks in advance I see them pending on the calendar. A commemoration of exactitude, the dates clumped together like lit windows in a building across the avenue . Windows I hardly notice until in one of them I recognize a face and start to panic. I, who strive to be inhabited by words, unable to put together the idea with the thing itself. A sheaf spilled open, pigeons pecking for crumbs on the sidewalk, a whole flock poised above on a wire as though ready to descend, a deafening flutter cascading down. An unctuous residue on the pavement. It isn't difficult to find this place on the map of your going. Let's say it's by a river, let's say I am supposed to meet you at a particular time, though I can't, because I can't remember what it was I had agreed to. Only that there is this date circled, not in red— the black numeral underlined in pencil. Underneath a sketch of sunbeams slanting through clouds. What am I missing? What anniversary or augured occasion? What saint is sitting at a bright table, awaiting the rapture of arrival? The water murmuring, lapping against the pier, just audible beneath the gaps in conversation. This absence not regarded as forgivable. \No matter how inadvertently one's attention is drawn elsewhere in the flash and dazzle of the day. You are drinking coffee or something else I only can imagine. You might have said something to the waiter before you took out your money and stood up. What else could happen as he scrapes the tablecloth? My voice on the cell phone intermittent in the static, my pledge of apology subject to atmospheric conditions. The words themselves spaced, so that anything could pass between a sentence and its meaning. The scroll of weather, a severe or abject mood. Love can fade without prompting. A baby we're told bonds to its parents' faces. Thus, we gaze at each other, fixing the other's gaze. Possessing the face we want. The wind sweeping up the seeds of desire as the leaves fall. Until there is nothing left floating in the folds of air above the traffic. Until we can hardly remember what we were and when we stopped wanting what we wanted.
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