Cherry Tomatoes

Warm air.
Freshly pressed white tee.
He is standing at my front door, telling me that he’s never met someone like me.

Every night we exchange stories about unknown places and he tells me all about faces I haven’t seen
And I’m back in history class, listening to tales about the Rwandan Genocide
He tells me about his parents
And his younger sister
Mentions his grandmother
and how she’d wear pearls and a bun
And host Sunday supper and extravagant parties in June

We listen to our favorite tunes
Sing along to Bill and Steve
Makeup names for the imaginary kids we won’t have
We daydream of projects that don’t have business plans, and we listen to The Girl From Ipanema, thinking that if we changed the lyrics, she’d be the Girl From Bolivia.

I talk about the future.
And how I don’t want to be 75 with regrets
How I don’t want to pick the fresh cherry tomatoes from my garden and think about the boy who inspired me to stand a little taller that summer.

I tell him how I feel.
But his silence is enough to shatter my heart on the spot.
He looks into the distance and gives me a hug.

We are crying and smiling, and I know I won’t think about him when I am 75 and picking cherry tomatoes from my garden.

I will think about two people who exchanged stories the same way little kids exchange baseball cards.