Stupidly Good
by Carl James Grindley
There used to be an old school patisserie on one side of Bastion Square and Lora and I would go
there on our way to work–the tip of my umbrella sticking for a moment in the wooden
cobblestones–and we would order pain au chocolates or rather I would order a pain au chocolate
and Lora would get a bran muffin because she was watching her weight although her weight was
perfect like her hair was perfect like her eyes were perfect like her skin was perfect like the list
of everything about her that could be made into a list was perfect and I would glance at the front
page of an imported copy of the New York Times but I never bought an imported copy of the
New York Times because it was four dollars and I did not know that many years later I would be
in New York and Lora would not be in New York and the patisserie would be long closed but this
is what I thought one random morning about everything:
Last night’s rain has blackened
The cobblestones and I slide
My left arm overtop of your right
Arm because I don’t want you to
Slip and you don’t slip, and suddenly
We’re alone in the alleyway between
Our apartment and the square
And I see how beautiful
You are and how beautiful
The morning is and like Eve
To Milton’s Satan, you are so
Beautiful that I cannot say
Anything, I cannot say, I cannot, I,
And my mind is blank: that’s how beautiful
You are and when I can speak again–
The sun moved a little just so–I would like
To tell you how beautiful you are,
But I’ve already told you
How beautiful you are twice
This morning and a third
Time might be too much and I don’t
Know if comparing myself to Satan
Will win me any friends
Or influence people,
But it’s true, you really are so beautiful
That for a brief moment
I forgot about eternal damnation
And sin and death and the full on
Spectrum of time from creation
To now and here, now,
All these years later,
I know I made a mistake,
Did the wrong thing, should
Have said something, anything, so.
I never actually ordered a pain au chocolate and I don’t think Lora ever had a bran muffin. The
bakery sold these expensive stuffed croissants–with like spinach and cheese–and we couldn’t
really afford either because we were so young and just starting out, so I think we either got
coffee or just walked on by. But it was a bakery that I always wanted to patronize. The
newspaper, by the way, was purchased frequently but at a newstand in Market Square. It was part
of my dim sum routine, but by then, Lora was long gone, replaced for a little while by
Marlboros.
?
Carl James Grindley grew up on an island off the West Coast of Canada, and studied in the US and Europe. He has taught creative writing at Yale University, and works at The City University of New York. His book Icon was published in 2008 by No Record Press. He has recent work in Apocrypha & Apostrophe, Anemone Sidecar, A Bad Penny Review, Eunoia Review, Anastomoo and Atticus Review. Grindley is a founding editor of The South Bronx Review.
photo by Jean Louis Zimmerman.
