Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

For years, I’ve been collecting first date stories. They make for great scenes in comedies, but nothing compares to the anxiety of real-life romantic goodbyes. It’s been many years for me, but in stories told by younger friends and students, that end-of-the-date parting is still embarrassing and fraught, especially when the evening reached its apex long before the appetizers arrived.

Is there any situation more vulnerable for potential, amorous partners than that moment ending an evening of performative first impressions? Personally, I’ve experienced everything from a soft kiss to awkward hugs to clammy handshakes to goodbyes from the driver’s seat followed by screeching tires…which is the equivalent of don’t call us, and we’ll never call you.

But then, occasionally, the dreaded decision to wave goodbye, shake hands, hug, or kiss turns into an invitation to stretch the evening longer, maybe to a nearby all-night diner, or an ice-cream parlor, or nightcap at a piano bar or on a couch watching a movie.

Today’s poem reveals that often more is in the cards when we pause and sit still in the ease and comfort of someone new.

Did you want to come in?
by Temperance Aghamohammadi

Stepping out of. He presses the ticket stub in my hand. Mouth still licorice. And buttered. And sweet
he asks. If I’d like a ride home. And I’d rather not. Walk

                                                                                                                  [ ]

Something which sounds. Like away.                                                   Like everything wind.


Like everything rushing into.                                                                      Everywhere not.

                                                                                                                  [ ]

Night ebbs in me. Water. Clementine haze in his Camaro. Idled outside my door. On my breast. A
meteorite dangling through. Silver thread. Silver light.
                                                                                                                            Waylaid. Fire-bright. On the windshield.
The flaring stars. Deciduous. Everything which is. A hand and another. Rasping for heat.

                                                                                                                  [ ]

Spindled branches knocking on my apartment’s window. A maple’s face peering. In. The streetlamps 
making. Mechanically. Many moons. Electrically seething: did you. did you. want. to come in

                                                                                                                  [ ]

Shoal of leaves swimming.                                                                   Green through the unmade.

                                                                                                                  [ ]

A stranger’s hand. Slow-turning the door knob into. Errantry. As his scarlet boots step across. And into 
the living. Room. He pulls his shoelace through. He unbuttons. 
                                                                                                                                          The first of many. Fingers through his
gelled mullet. In the threshold. My own hand on. My own canyoned neck.

                                                                                                                  [ ]

Everywhere light casts.                                                                              Everywhere a tourniquet of shade.
 
                                                                                                                  [ ]

His chest. On mine. His cologne. Bonfire smoke. His heart. Keeps beating. On the green couch.

Still. I recline. I ruin. I meteorite. O. I. Could I. Could just. I could just. Disappear.

"Did you want to come in" by Temperance Aghamohammadi. Used by permission of the poet.