He Looked Like Someone's Neighbor

It was a Tuesday.

He was at the pump in sweatpants,

travel mug balanced on the roof of his car,

the mug trembling a little in the wind.

I almost kept walking.

He looked up and I could see him

searching for my name

in a room he hadn't been in

for years.

He found something close enough.

How are you, he said.

Good, I said. You?

His hands on the handle—

wedding ring, dry knuckles,

the numbers climbing on the pump.

In eleventh grade he read us Prufrock out loud.

The whole poem. Standing on his desk at the end.

We thought it was the most important thing

anyone had ever done.

I don't know what I imagined

he was doing with the rest of it—

something continuous, something

that deserved the desk.

Good, he said. Real good.

The mug didn't fall.