Reckoning

"There will be time to audit
The  accounts later, there will be sunlight later
And the equation will come out at last."
		—Louis  MacNiece, "Autumn Journal"

I return arabbiatas from Picasso's on Bleecker.
Manchego and quince, I return my taste for it.
I return zinnias.	
I return cumin, red lentils, almonds, pomegranates, molasses.
I return your entire family and each of their secrets.
From this day forward, I possess no knowledge of your medical history.
I return yoga.
I return Curtis Mayfield.
I return the créme rinse that made your hair smell like childhood.
I return the trip we'd planned to Africa.
I return New England, all of Soho, and most of Hudson Street.
I return your white linen shirt.
I return the name Clementine for a girl and for a boy William.
I return your fire escape, your claw-footed tub, your kitchen, the slap of your screen door.
I return the Old Masters.
I return NPR from a transistor radio, how it sounded simultaneously, impossibly, near and far away.
I return your bed, the coverlet made of old linen handkerchiefs.
I return your twenty-ninth birthday.
I return your thirtieth birthday.
I return your thirty-first birthday.
I return your kiss, every glint of your teeth, your metallic tongue, and 
the empty space inside your wine-dark mouth.