Good Year, Third Week of August

I found a clip on my phone — thirty seconds, a bar

that's gone now. Us at some corner table.

I watched it twice. The third time through, the scar

showed up: the timestamp. I wasn't able

to not do the math. Two weeks before

that August. The long drive home. The wall

we built from not talking. The slow door

between us in the car. The fall

of a good summer into what came next.

In the clip we're still laughing — the crowd

behind us full of strangers, the context

of a night not ended yet, not loud,

just easy. Then the clip ends. The phone

goes dark. My face in the black screen —

partial, pale, the version that has known

for a while now. The one that's been

in every room since.

I locked the phone. The bar closed down

last March. I drive past it. The distance

between then and now: the town

just going. The evening going.

My face still in the black screen, knowing.