He got used to walking

under the plane trees, dissipating

hangovers and hazy memories.

The truth is they had little in common.

The first time they met they were

sitting on the same side

of a bar but on different ends.

She wore the most ardent

red he had ever seen,

under a brutal gray made

almost excusable by the January cold.

They didn’t sleep together right away.

But he had her to thank for a trail

of happy sperm in the bed

where he died alone. Stretched out next to

Berkeley, Wittgenstein and Spinoza,

the pages of a course he didn’t care for

and that at least didn’t dirty his nights.

Within a few weeks they were walking

hand in hand through the garden

or along the streets near the bar.

Until the day she stopped coming.

Heart on fire, ashes everywhere

— there’s no return from a red like that.

(by manuel de freitas, picture by clive jebbett)