That Small Adjustment

She reached across the table

and fixed his collar.

Didn't look at him first.

Just saw it was crooked

and fixed it,

the way you'd push in a chair

in a room that's yours.

The table was laughing at something.

I couldn't tell you what.

I was holding a fork

with nothing on it.

I've known her since we were

twenty-two and she was crying

about a man whose name I can't place now,

and I had been the one she called,

I had been useful,

I had been—

He touched her hand.

She was already talking

to someone else across the table.

The collar was already forgotten.

Filed under ordinary.

Under ours.

I set the fork down.

I smiled when they said June.

Good month for it.

Outside, the parking lot held its dark

the way parking lots do—

perfectly indifferent

to what happens inside.