Jan

Jan for all i know you were the prettiest girl in town maybe that's why i'm rattling at your life after all these years (as she lightly brushes a child aside to indicate the rumpled-thicket living room)
she is pretty, yes and when i fled to the city she stepped quickly into marriage, then into this farmhouse a mile from home		"you look...the same."
		"...so do you."
the house tightens around us gathering us into the blue Chevy -- 1962 i was sweating all the way down my sides as we ended our only date and pulled up before her house i thought a goodnight kiss might be all right but it wasn't --it wasn't enough-- feeling stupid i started the car and we fled again for the country where we necked for an hour....
but the past has passed Jan is only a mile from childhood and i am...from the city she raises her eyes, memory smoking in them as she recalls my fear and laughs
		"dad liked you, actually. he wondered why you never came around again. and, i wasn't sure, myself."
i thought her father would kill me for mauling his daughter, i thought his daughter would kill me with her exquisite fire, i thought God would stop us somehow.... (i was astonished that she lived in Wyoming in the first place)		"i should have called you, i suppose."
		"...or, i could have called you."
In 1962? no, you couldn't have called and yes, i was afraid but that was twenty years ago now i am only a little stupid (and the child shows me out as a tractor growls into the yard)