a failure of memory

In bed the following morning I read aloud from Poe and we ate cold buttered toast in our underwear. Like a chimpanzee she groomed the crumbs from my chest hair and like a foal I pressed my nose into the warmth of her neck and slipped my fingers beneath her pants and let them rest there as I read. It must have been early for the sun was weak through the windows but I opened a can of tepid beer left under my bed and drank from it, then passed it over to her and she did likewise. We passed it back and forth and drained it quickly. After several chapters I left the bed and dressed and told her I had to go to work, a truth she acknowledged if disapproved of. She left the bed to return to her boyfriend’s room next door, and the structure of her body was very beautiful as she did so, the way one side of her pants was caught helplessly between her buttocks and her stomach was slightly round, and I tried so hard to commit these things to memory but as soon as the front door closed behind me they were gone, the memory of the memory more memorable than the memory itself.