Eric McHenry
Tubthumping
Remember when you asked me for a ride
to Lawrence because you wanted to spend
Thanksgiving break with your other boyfriend
and I was going that way anyway?
This had to be 1992.
He was from high school and you weren’t done
breaking up with him. You never lied
to either of us; you reminded me of that.
I walk a lot now, and the other day
I looked up and recognized the frat
you and your duffel bag disappeared into.
I know you have bad memories of here,
and not of him—of the half-year
you spent waiting for grad school, waiting tables,
waiting for me to come home from work.
But I’d stopped at Centennial Park
to play disc golf again
and left you waiting for dark, then in the dark,
in a town in which you knew no one
but me and two aggressively Christian couples
and that old boyfriend, who was now of course
a cub reporter for 49 NewsSource
and could be counted on to appear
in our apartment at about 5:10.
Now I live two blocks from Centennial.
I used to throw the old discs with my son
until last summer when I ruptured one
on the tee pad of the 11th hole.
That’s why I’m walking so much; I can’t run.
They got the inflammation under control
with a couple of cortisone shots, but now the sole
of my left foot is permanently numb.
You might be thinking karma—you’d be entitled to.
But life isn’t obvious and neither are you.
You used to say some petty things, then call
them petty, which the petty never do.
I came to you directly from my parents,
pretty much, which meant I had to learn
that love was another thing I had to earn
and that even kindness could be difficult.
Thank you. I do hope you’ve forgiven Lawrence.
It’s a great town and nothing was its fault.
We’d broken up for the last time
the last time we got into bed together.
It was like one of those artificially complex
story problems from the GRE:
friends’ wedding, you and me and another couple
who were still a couple, motel room with a pair
of queens to be split three ways among four people.
And you were already with the guy you’d marry
eventually, but he wasn’t there.
Love and Chumbawamba were in the air,
and we were both a little drunk, I’m sure,
and because it was the only thing to do
we slid familiarly under the covers
and slept it off, chastely, not taking care
not to face each other, a buffer of trust
between us that we must have acquired somewhere.
Eric McHenry lives in Lawrence, Kansas, and teaches English at Washburn University. His most recent book of poems is Odd Evening, which was a finalist for the 2018 Poets’ Prize. He was poet laureate of Kansas from 2015–2017.