sketches for a story

you know puppyfish
i can already tell that you're a boy
i'm not sure how i can tell, i just can

you know puppyfish
that's happened before

once there was a man
i loved this man very much
and i went to the city to see him
when i saw him
he told me
he and his lover were having a baby
and
i sort of knew that
but until he told me himself
i couldn't believe it

and i told him what a gift from god that was
and what a great father he was going to be
and those things were true

but
it cost me something to tell him that just then
and when i was alone again i felt like
there was a hole through me
and every now and then
i could hear the wind whistle through it

so
i'm alone in the city
and i don't really like the city
don't really have any interest in seeing anything
so i go to china town, at least i think i was in china town
it seemed more like a movie set of china town from the fifties

anyway
i thought about china town in san francisco when i was three
which i can't remember very well but which impressed me
and i thought about china town in the town i'm from
and the first restaurant where i ate chinese food
after telling them i didn't like it and wouldn't eat it
i tried it and liked it
and my mom's boyfriend said the restaurant looked like
a mexican bus station
and i wondered what he meant
and i thought about china town in chicago
and the amazing little tea shop with the hundreds of teas
and then
i looked at this china town
and i thought of epcot
and i thought i might feel better if i cried

now puppyfish
i may have had it all wrong
i was depressed and not wanting to see good in it
and one of the places i actually like in the city
i can't wait to take you there in fact
is a beautiful pagoda-like museum
but it's all full of japanese art

so i ate something
and i went into this little shop
and i wandered around forever until i finally bought
a little tiny blue silk dress
with butterflies tone on tone woven into the cloth
it had a little mandarin collar
and little frog knot closures
and i bought it for his daughter
because i knew the baby was going to be a girl

and the last day i was in the city
i was going to see him again
and i tried and tried to think of how to give it to him
but i knew i couldn't
that it wouldn't be appropriate
and i walked from my car to the place i was going to see him
and there was this tree
it had shed so many tiny purple flowers
it had painted the sidewalk
and i'd only ever seen a tree with flowers that color
once before
and that was in a dream in a movie
and everything
everything in the world was conspiring
to be beautiful and meaningful and deep
just at that moment

and then i saw him
and he smiled at me
with this almost teen aged look
like he hadn't really expected me to be there

and i didn't tell him
that he was going to have a little girl
and i didn't give him the blue silk dress