—And when you have forgotten the bright bedclothes on a Wednesday and a Saturday, <br />And most especially when you have forgotten Sunday— <br />When you have forgotten Sunday halves in bed, <br />Or me sitting on the front-room radiator in the limping afternoon <br />Looking off down the long street <br />To nowhere, <br />Hugged by my plain old wrapper of no-expectation <br />And nothing-I-have-to-do and I’m-happy-why? <br />And if-Monday-never-had-to-come— <br />When you have forgotten that, I say, <br />And how you swore, if somebody beeped the bell, <br />And how my heart played hopscotch if the telephone rang; <br />And how we finally went in to Sunday dinner, <br />That is to say, went across the front room floor to the ink-spotted table in the southwest corner <br />To Sunday dinner, which was always chicken and noodles <br />Or chicken and rice <br />And salad and rye bread and tea <br />And chocolate chip cookies— <br />I say, when you have forgotten that, <br />When you have forgotten my little presentiment <br />That the war would be over before they got to you; <br />And how we finally undressed and whipped out the light and flowed into bed, <br />And lay loose-limbed for a moment in the week-end <br />Bright bedclothes, <br />Then gently folded into each other— <br />When you have, I say, forgotten all that, <br />Then you may tell, <br />Then I may believe <br />You have forgotten me well.<br /><br />Gwendolyn Brooks<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/when-you-have-forgotten-sunday-the-love-story/
