In the photo, you’re holding
a bowl up to your chin,
the phrase If you love the cat
painted on it. I asked what
the other side said, but you
couldn’t remember. No ending
makes sense – that profound
secret left among the shelves.

Only an E and X peek through
your puffer jacket’s zipper teeth
(another phrase I’ll never know).
I transfigure them into words like
T-Rex or Sexy, a little irony to match
the laugh I imagine after the shutter
of your friend’s camera phone.
Straight black hair streams over
your shoulders like ribbons from
the cuff of your Capitals beanie.
Thick-rimmed glasses draw me
into squinting eyes, your stacked smile,
then asymmetric lines of shelves
crossing behind you, bringing you close.

Seeing the picture months after,
I notice smaller details: the uneven
white tips of your nails at the edges
of the bowl, scattered hairs falling over
your clothes like scratch lines on old film,
orange clearance stickers making a future
out of crockpots, fake China, silverware.
I have no clue where you are, only that
some part of you moves from that aisle,
effortlessly – toward me, then away.