I didn’t even know him when I wrote this,
I was mad to think he cared.
—Kevin Killian
I read an old poem about
where you are now and I
go “Wow!” It’s like I knew
you when I wrote it, but
no. Can’t be. Impossible.
Which takes the cake. Or
is the icing. When I see
an icicle I think of the
building in the backyard
of the house where I grew
up. Growing up is supposed
to be evolving, right? And,
of course, literally, growing
upwards. Gaining height
and breadth and girth. But
Dad would say, as it turns
out, quite often, when I’d
come home from graduate
school for the holidays or
a funeral, “You were so
much more mature when
you were three.” And he
was probably right. I like
that, of course. Concept
ually. But icicles. Also
make me think of vampires.
Is that weird? So this, as
you well know, is how I
own a conversation. It is
my form of control, this
meandering. Is that so
horrible? I come back
to you. In time. Just,
as it turns out, I looked
for, and, sometimes,
found you, years before
we met. To believe in
fate is daft, removes all
control from one’s destiny,
right? But piecing together
each odd moment of seren
dipity, cataloguing every
coincidence, even taking
into consideration that
hindsight is a form of
clairvoyance, at what
point does this cluster
of soothsaying incidents
become an anomaly?
It doesn’t matter if
nothing drew us
together or if some
unknown law of
magnetism gave us
no choice but to wind
up here, arm in arm,
eye to eye, etc. The
point is I like this point,
this moment in time,
and am giddy at the
mathematics of our
trajectory. Our what
ever, our ever after.
