Olives

When people ask me what I miss most about you–

(They don’t, but in my head they do)

I say I miss the olives.

The nonexistent theys smile, puzzled

And I have an audience for my story now.

I tell them about a cocktail bar where I sat in a black dress and high heels

And damn was I ever a fully grown, twenty year-old kid.

You wore button-up shirts that seemed designed to rest with tantalizing closeness against your broad chest.

I rested there too sometimes.

I can’t remember how it felt to run my hands over you, but I can imagine how it felt when I could remember.

It isn’t you anymore, I know that. It’s only someone that my mind made up to placate me.

The memory I imagine felt like a shuddering breath,

A stomach too empty for gin.

So I ordered a dish of warm, spiced olives and they tasted divine.

He had never liked olives, wouldn’t even let me have them in the house, but you

You shared them with me, one way or another.

I felt like every movie heroine who had ever perched on a bar stool, legs crossed, glass held carelessly between fingertips that know how to cause trouble.

You know the type.

But when we finally came to know that nights cannot hold together days,

When I finally realized that I was not the type to drink martinis in high heels, draped on the arm of some man

(Not some man, not any man)

I never went to Clive’s again.

And I miss, with something close to desperation, the time when the salt on my lips was from an olive and not from a breaking point struck at 1 am.

Oh yes, I say. I miss the olives.

Olives were easier to swallow.