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you sit down to write a poem.

Alice is in your writing class, the same age; you have a weekly date

to draft (you) homages to whomever you read that morning and (her)

sprawling stanzas on fruit. Alice, she's coming soon; a whole

morning's worth of divots the wall's taken out of your back, and you

have nothing to show but some bruises on your skin.

You and Alice make avocado salad

she's from California, and the salad's always bad

because in California (land of milk, honey, and seasonally abundant produce)

you can walk right into the store and buy one ripe.

Here they always start off with a thick knobbed rind,

and you're both too impatient to really wait for it to thin.

You spend a lot of time eating half-hard avocado

wishing you were someplace warm.

that's when you see Alice coming through the quad,

old faded men's jeans she wears sliding off her hips

you still, just where you are (later you will find an inkblot on your best

white shirt)

and wonder if you have ever written anything

about anything but falling in love.

this is how you spent the morning: consider, consider, reject

stars and statues and hair and parents and a certain slant of light

winter afternoons; also, the wisteria behind the bench you're sitting

on, the baseball you tossed around at lunch; also, your fear of

flying, your fear of the future, your fear of the tomato soup you

made two weeks ago the remains of which are still in the refrigerator

and you really don't want to open the container now.

you kept winding up back at Alice, though you didn't know it; her curly hair

and olive skin carefully disguised, metaphored past muddiness,

because you knew even under the skitter of your mind

she'll be reading every line.

you write four stanzas

before she gets to you; it's a big lawn and she has many friends.

"Thank God you're late," you say. "I was so blocked

this morning I didn't know what to do."

"What do you have," she says, tossing her bag on the grass and tumbling

after it, sprawling in the glittered sun, her shirt riding up

the shallow curve of hipbone, worn leather belt. She holds her hand out

for the paper on your lap; if you hold on to your poem when she pulls,

either the paper will rip, or you\'ll be on the grass too.

"Well," you say. You let go, you give her your poem. "It's about falling in love."