When You Have Forgotten Sunday: The Love Story

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917- ) Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas but grew up in Chicago. She was the first black American to win a Pulitzer Prize, in 1950. She is a witty poet who satirizes blacks and whites and attacks racial discrimination. She uses black language and rituals to proclaim black solidarity.

That the war would be over before they got
to you;
--And when you have forgotten the bright
bedclothes
on a
Wednesday and a Saturday,
And most especially when you have forgotten
Sunday -
When you have forgotten Sunday halves in
bed,
Or me sitting on the front-room radiator in
the limping
afternoon
Looking off down the long street
To nowhere,
Hugged by my plain old wrapper of
no-expectation
And if-Monday-never-had-to-come
When you have forgotten that, I say,
And how you swore, if somebody beeped
the bell,
And how my heart played hopscotch if the
telephone rang;
And how we finally went in to Sunday dinner,
That is to say, went across the front-room
floor to the
ink-spotted table in the southwest corner
To Sunday dinner, which was always chicken
and noodles
Or chicken and rice
And salad and rye bread and tea
And chocolate chip cookies --
I say, when you have forgotten that,
When you have forgotten my little
presentiment
And how we finally undressed and whipped
out the
light and
flowed into bed,
And lay loose-limbed for a moment in the
week-end
Bright bedclothes,
Then gently folded into each other --
When you have, I say, forgotten all that,
Then you may tell,
Then I may believe
You have forgotten me well.