Eleven Months

She asked how you were doing.

I was holding a basket — the cheap pasta,

a lime, a thing or two I'd talked myself

into needing — and I said,

good, yeah, she's good.

Which was a sentence I built

from nothing, in real time.

Her cart was right there between us

with that same orange oatmeal box

you kept in a row on your second shelf.

I recognized the label

before I recognized

I was lying.

There was no fight. No last night.

Just a drift that hardened

somewhere between March and whenever

this is, and nobody filed anything.

She said, tell her I said hi.

I said I would.