The Lover’s Moan

Sarah Ansani

I remember my mother’s secrets about you.
A low tone in her voice, an animal escaping.
She told me you were an amazing lover.
You fit her.
You knew just where to touch
and lick
and press.

I am older now and can figure out the rest
on my own. The moans she moaned are mine
and your calloused fingers are reborn
into another man that presses my hips
and hovers above me like you hover

above my mother,

you unfathomable dream.
Your mind changed like sheets
on her bed before she met my father.

He never heard these things about you. He knew
about the calls late at night when the government was asleep
and the wires were not tapped. That you knew
why Yankee Doodle Dandy called the feather macaroni.
About the millions owed to you by the president
and the whores you spent real money on.
Did their lips resist yours like mine?

Do not think that I was too young to remember
the stone features on my mother’s face
when she looked at my father, wanting to see you instead.
That the simple gesture of turning on the radio
while my mother was away made it okay for you
to climb into the back seat with me,
asking me if I liked this,
if I liked that,
as Eric Clapton sang Tears in Heaven.

There were things, Michael, I liked about you.
Your home above Sam’s Shoes was dark. You played
Vivaldi and vanished into the kitchen to make tea,
forcing me to sit on your couch (your bed) with my mother.
We sat silent together.

To this day, I wonder why my mother and I took
the cash from your hands.
A gift, you said.
Were you buying my memories of you sleeping
in our garage? Or of you sleeping
in that torn green tent that smelled of fish
in our front yard? Or memories of driving with my mother
only to find you in the library’s dumpster?

I liked my mother’s happiness that day you randomly arrived
in a car you did not really know how to drive. With money
you did not know how to keep. Both of you picked me
and a friend up from school just the way
my mother and father never did.
My mother smiled that day as you drove my friend home
as if you knew where you were going . . .
. . . for once.

That was the last day I saw you. You were leaving
Pennsylvania for Virginia—Did her name provide
solace for you? Was her breast one that never went dry
for you?—You left despite my mother’s moans
that went unheard when you went away.
Despite her grasp on the curtain of the last window
she would see you through. I stopped counting my money
and wondered why she held on to things
that did not hold in return.

My mother moaned the day you died. The Lover’s Moan,
she called it later, as we sat together and talked.
Her speech was full of praise for your sick mind.
Phrases: paranoia, very sick man, schizophrenia,
kept me silently moaning inside.

That was my last memory of seeing you. A picture
of your dead body on the railroad tracks
in Charlottesville, Virginia. Not a scratch or bruise,
just internal bleeding. But we always knew
about the internal bleeding.

You had no family. My father drove my mother down
to see your body. She gathered the things you owned
in a grocery bag. She took a misshapen ring
from your thin finger
that did not fit her.

When they arrived home, my father described the University of Virginia.
My mother preached The Lover’s Moan
when we were alone together.
And still she prays
for you and to saints
that I can’t remember.