Do you remember the fat dog sleeping against your leg?
How the cat slithered past my lazy arms
The narrow raindrops fizzing out our smokes?
You looked like a stubborn baby
Hair shaven, a martyr to the city's heat
A lovely evening by a lake where you swore you saw a duck.
I'd known it, then and there,
I'd write a poem about it some day
When I've left everything behind and into oblivion
Yet not quite.
Do you remember? How I fumbled with my voice
Before we leaned into a discussion
About war, drugs, trafficking, and myriad other headlines
Everything but what was on our minds,
Now I know how poetic it is that our lives are bordered by deaths of different kinds
And laced with a never-effacing grief.
Do you remember it at all?
Any moment, howsoever brief?