Lost it.
Lost. It.
That’s what he said.
Lost it, last night, her place.
Not a phone or the house keys,
you know what.
Mutual, so that was a relief.
It was the lunchtime
that sent them all flocking.
A horde of eyes honed in on him,
excitement swimming in the air,
questions ready to hop
off from their tongues.
Nothing unexpected.
It is what it is, what we were taught.
He felt glad, a burden, a flaw
wrenched out from him
as though a sickness
swept away from within.

He said he wasn’t one of them anymore,
as though he’d moved into a new club
where this was the norm,
weekend gettings-it-on in bedrooms
riddled with indie-rock band posters
and a floral bedspread.
I asked him where he’d lost it.
Would he ever get it back,
like a football
punted into a hedge long ago?
A quizzical look.
I thought of everybody I knew
losing things, dropping that word
from their dictionaries
and scrawling something new
with a new body,
a sensation never quite like the first time.
Years disappeared,
myself the blank domino
among the pack.
I wonder if he can recall her name.
I didn’t admire him.
I was still one of them,
still am one of them
but there are no sighs.
It is only a moment of a moment
in a chapter in a story
that has yet to begin,
and I’ll decide
when the page is turned.