You walk
but not how they want you to walk.
Half the work is not 'showing up,'
it's the first part.
There are a lot of subsequent parts
And not subtly, even.
You were the cask of Zinfandel
too saccharine to drink
but too lovely a wood case to give up
all ways. Stumbling around like a drunk
or the big brother from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre
(it was totally fictional) but this is not fictional.
Happening like happenstance did not happen.
You are a year and three months older,
is all.
The jeans are overlarge, you are somehow
too thin and too fat at the same time,
you still fall in love with things —like
a book—so intensely, like a child would
and it becomes about learning, and
where everything is about that love.
And yet I'm not building a case
for your being a child,
your complicated life
was adult.
