More forays into the experiments of form -- nonfiction needs some new form words, I think. Poetry is allowed to call anything poetry, but nonfiction is all about the essay. I don't think this thing here is a poem, but an essay? Well, maybe. Maybe an essay is whatever I want it to be and that is more freeing.

I wrote this a little while ago. I really like it, but I don't know if this is the right form for these bits and pieces. I created the "Top Five" approach because Kevin & I play this game where we give each other a category and have to choose our top five (female singers, breakfast foods, articles of clothing, etc.) We actually did this once, and these were our answers. Then I elaborated on what actually took place, to make it more interesting for you all...

Top Five Favorite Dates*

*Date is loosely define as any sequence of hours spent alone together, whether formally arranged or happenstance, during which, kissing, holding of hands or a general sense of romance may have occurred.

His

1. As a Christmas present, you took me for one night to a rustic cabin at Elkhorn Hot Springs (which has since been shut down for fire code violations). We soaked in the outdoor pool and used the indoor sauna made of slick wood; we played trivial pursuit in our cabin which was sagging under the weight of so much snow. The wood stove kept filling the room up with smoke. We made mac and cheese and vegetarian hot dogs. You were sick in the middle of the cold night; we still don’t know if it was the smoke or the hot dogs but you haven’t eaten them since.

2. You came to Montana to see me for spring break, when we were still new. I had been in school there for two months; I had been waiting to see you stand by the mountains. We walked to the Co-op in the snowy streets to buy premade take-out. In my dorm room we spread the comforter on the tile floor and watched “Wonder Boys” while we ate broccoli cheddar soup and couscous salad, then made love there on the floor.

3. I had only been to Lava Lake in the winter, when it was an ice sheet I could walk right onto, so I took you back in the summer. We hiked through a meadow and over a wooden bridge where we felt the spray. When we got there, I raced ahead with the camera, to take a picture of your face the first time you saw it. But I was awestruck and forgot. We sat for hours on the rock and wet our feet; when I saw a chipmunk, I turned too quickly and dropped my lens cap into the rocks, so a part of that day remains.

4. See #3, hers.

5. You were taking a nap when I asked if I could join you. You said my eyes looked like sunflowers and it gave me the courage to kiss you, for the first time.

Hers

1. I drove from NH to NY to see you on New Year’s Eve, the first one we would spend together, in the middle of a year during which we barely saw each other at all. I was dressed up for you and you took me to the Autumn Café where we shared carrot ginger soup and enchiladas. Full of cooks with dreadlocks and patched pants, I felt so warm and at home.

2. See #2, his.

3. We had weeks of winter break together and spent it all in upstate NY, finally ending up in Ithaca, in my third floor apartment. We went to Moosewood, and you were embarrassed because I buttoned one you missed in your fly in public. After we saw “A Very Long Engagement” with subtitles, at the independent movie theatre, we walked home. There was snow on the ground and it started snowing again, and the Christmas lights were still up all over town.

4. In the middle of a sticky July, when we lived together in Montana even though it had been less than a year, you came home from chemistry lab and pulled me out the door and drove me around Ted Turner’s ranch to the crumbling wooden building we call the shack. And we just stood beneath it, pretending it could be our house, and saw the buffalo in the distance.

5. We had been lying on my bed for hours and you said “I don’t know what to do. Because I like you but I’m leaving. And I don’t know whether I should kiss you or run out that door.” But then you did kiss me, for the very first time.