Notes About His Hands, Part 3

(Things To Forget Him By)

1) Order your steak bloody, your whiskey, straight up.

2) Purchase sensible things you’ve needed for some time: ink cartridge, rain gear,
vacuum-cleaner bags.

3) Picture him tasting the congealed frosting of wedding cake samples, talking to the
blonde-tipped florist, checking his watch every fifth word.

4) Remember all the places his hands have (haven’t) been and all the places you wish
his hands have (haven’t) been.

5) Take long baths.

6) Make dinner for the man you live with. Manage (a record) not the burn the sauce.

7) See him everywhere: hotel bars; the laughter of people on trains; the dopey,
blanked-out eyes of the Krispy Kreme guy.

8) Floss.

9) Take to drinking sherry in the tub while leafing through women’s magazines. Learn
to mulch, prevent rug burn, undo a zipper with your teeth.

10) Buy a rubber plant on sale. Manage (a record) to keep it alive for a month.

11) Recall, in the dark, the warmth of his mouth on your neck, the warmth of his neck
on your mouth.

12) Picture him, again, the only way you know how: standing around the portico,
fumbling with the lighter, his shoulders hunched against the wind and beyond him the
water, always the water…