Lisa

                        We sit and talk,
quietly, with long lapses of silence
and I am aware of the stream
which has no language, coursing
beneath the quiet heaven of
your eyes

                      which has no speech; to
go to bed with you, to pass beyond
the moment of meeting, while the
currents float still in mid-air, to
fall—
with you from the brink, before
the crash—

                      to seize the moment.

William Carlos Williams, Paterson 1:ii

I was thinking of the last moment with Lisa. She had left me for another man, a funnier man, a married man, but perhaps someone not as afraid of growing up as I was. But there was a final moment, a hot and sweaty moment, as she sat on my lap in the front seat of my car. A goodbye fuck? It was my first and last.

The photograph is of a happier time, down by the river, water rushing by over the rocks. We made love and photographs; the rocks were warm, and the water was cold.