Eau Fraiche
︎︎︎ Joe Amato
︎ Aug 28, 2025
How it always happens:
a furtive stain
on my chambray shirt
washed and ironed a day ago,
the one I wore
that August Sunday
three years back and
five hours on the train,
Geneva-Brig-Locarno . . .
you didn’t want me to come,
but I sensed
this was the final rendez-vous,
and it was. You left me
wild-eyed with expectation
and the scent of
Eau Fraiche
on my collar
the next morning
in the alberghetto
and later in my room
and month after month
in the Duty Free at SFO or Kloten
or Charles de Gaulle: that synthesis
of sea and summer and disappointment—
no water in the drydown, only wood.
I toss spent airport blotters
from my briefcase pocket.
You must not think of me this way.
Whatever spirit cannot,
water washes out.
a furtive stain
on my chambray shirt
washed and ironed a day ago,
the one I wore
that August Sunday
three years back and
five hours on the train,
Geneva-Brig-Locarno . . .
you didn’t want me to come,
but I sensed
this was the final rendez-vous,
and it was. You left me
wild-eyed with expectation
and the scent of
Eau Fraiche
on my collar
the next morning
in the alberghetto
and later in my room
and month after month
in the Duty Free at SFO or Kloten
or Charles de Gaulle: that synthesis
of sea and summer and disappointment—
no water in the drydown, only wood.
I toss spent airport blotters
from my briefcase pocket.
You must not think of me this way.
Whatever spirit cannot,
water washes out.
Joe Amato is a writer and culture strategist based in San Francisco. He received an inaugural Passage Prize for poetry.
Also by Joe: Weekend in Vals
Also by Joe: Weekend in Vals