When you press in the bedroom dark
and whisper because our son is sleeping
your story of the long bus ride
to my 24th birthday party, the bakeries

you visited searching for a carrot cake
because I said it was my favorite, in Yantai
where there was no such thing,
and the baker who approximated one based

on your description of mine, I can almost glimpse
my 24-year-old self standing in the corner,
close-cropped and flushed, the unholy idiot,
wanton for want of experience. How clumsily

I maimed and married you. I want to take him
by the shoulders but they are only my own.
Tell me again how closely I spoke with Sophia,
the two of us leaning together like lovebirds,

while you hesitated, unsure of your status
in a drinking party, a pitstop for most
before the club, how you hesitated,
waiting to announce the cake I wouldn’t even eat.