Beneath Stars Long Extinct

Temporal Men

66 Temporal Men Perhaps better nameless, the men who came before me outlasted my relationships with women we shared. First names remind me of holiday snapshot dopey grins, voicemail, and tales of unions’ downslopes. As past tense recollections, I knew men long gone emotionally, but still visiting us on the answering machine. Their ghosts watched us in a bed they once helped warm. Men with regrets, men with new wives, and men with both. Today, a guy says, I’m Jeff. I’ll be your waiter. Is he the Jeff sharing thoughts of the same woman’s throaty moan? What’s certain is our waking miles apart in common moonless blackness, aware unconfronted ache brings union to us all: our voices’ timber, who we are—even our names, once whispered among infinite yeses—will someday animate no memories. ...