By Eben E. B. Bein

for 天野 

I am sitting on a lozenge-shaped couch
in the waiting area of a Cartier,
wrinkling my nose at the etched perfume
and the fake-looking straight couple
on the #CartierStoriesByYou poster,
sending you snaps of the Panthère collection
with hammy voiceovers and there is no reason I,
who have never and will never again enter a Cartier,
should be so completely myself except I know
you will say yes.
                             And being so sure makes me
nervous since you bought the band yourself
years ago, convinced you would never meet someone,
and just this morning handed it to me:
Engrave something. Nine characters or less.
Surprise me. And to make matters worse, I,
who have vacillated for decades on a word,
knew instantly what it would be.

Yes. You’ve got me
so diamond clear, so fit to burst, so chest
full of yes compressions that when the sales associate
messes up your pronouns a third time
I just give a watery thanks and duck out

onto the street where actual people are,
and two of them, maybe a couple,
are laughing, like, with their actual bellies
at what must have been a stupid joke
and I didn’t hear a word of it but
now I’m laughing as well as crying,
so completely at yes with myself,
walking home so fast I’m almost running
because I can’t wait to tell you about it.

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Eben E. B. Bein (they/he) is a climate-justice-educator at the nonprofit Our Climate. They were a 2022 Fellow for the Writing By Writers workshop and winner of the 2022 Writers Rising Up “Winter Variations” poetry contest. Their first chapbook, Character Flaws, is out with Fauxmoir lit and they’ve published with Sonora Review and Crab Creek Review. They live on Pawtucket land (Cambridge, MA) with their husband and can be found at ebenbein.com.