I can smell the soap

on his skin when he turns to me       at the end of our second date, and asks if he can
kiss me. I like the soap.      Like that he asks. Like that he spends the hour with me in
a deserted cafe   teaching me how to fold a mangled receipt into a paper boat
first.    I smile, think, maybe tenderness is composed entirely of small labours.

We walk to the station together. Hey, maybe we could go to the Natural History Museum
next time? It’s raining and muggy and we huddle in       closer than we need to    
under my precarious umbrella and I say yeah, I’d really like that. He’s going westbound,
I’m going east. Monday? Three o’clock?   

Two-and-a-half months since we’ve both left and flown home, I’m sitting on the sofa
watching reruns with Mama. It’s Monday. Three o’clock.
Everything absurdly strange and absurdly sad.    

After lunch, I watch a small slice of sunlight poke its way through the gap-toothed drapes.
Cats play. Their shadows touch quietly. 

We don’t know each other well enough to miss each other, and it     seemed quite odd to
stay in touch after only two dates,     so we haven’t really spoken since, but I      liked the
way his hands moved. The way he heaped a small mountain of sugar into his coffee.  

Mama washes her hands in the kitchen sink and the smell of soap wafts into the room.   
We need to get some more of this stuff, she says.          

 hmm?          

  Yeah.    We do. 

Slightly amused,  she says oh darling, and peels me an orange