One More Date

You changed into jeans. Why did I feel
this sudden emptiness when
the signs looked so favorable before.
It was like leaves that change from lush green
to brittle brown almost in an instant.
Wasn’t I held together by hope?
I thought it nurtured me,
that it carried me this far?

Soon enough
we’ll sip suggested wine in the quiet square,
talk of daughters, sons,
café light will fall lightly on our shoulders, it will seem
as if I’ve recovered to find alternative solutions,
ready for a round of negotiations, thinking I’ll place
my hand here, or there.
It all depends.
After that, things might just go.

And whether we sleep together or alone,
it will be untidy on the flatland,
waking to a racket from the back lot
or fake chimes as if I were in a French village,
which will all occur without recordation or script.
There is so much to say,
and so little gets said from our lips.

Dale Cottingham is of mixed race, part Choctaw, part white. He is a Breadloafer, won the 2019 New Millennium Award for Poem of the Year and is a finalist in the 2021 Great Midwest Poetry Contest. He lives in Edmond, Oklahoma.