Loss – No. 1

It’s 6:00.
Where are you?

It wasn’t every
day our paths
crossed, but it was often
enough
to turn seeing you into a habit.
A comfortable, comforting rite of my pass-
ing day, a marker
that told me how well my week
was going
and made many things right
just by right
of your being
there.

What is this odd-strange world that makes friends
of virtual strangers, simply
by rights of habitual proximity?

What is that weird pen-
chant I/we/some people have to turn
acquaintances
into fixtures that fix
our wandering gazes just long
enough to hold us
close — all eyes and ears — close
enough to make us
feel
this must be something more
than accident… and no,
this was not some trick of chance log-
istics — it was
…
more.

Surely, we must be
connected… Or is it little more than
chemistry, instinctive cerebroglandular en-
thusiasm pumping us full
of what passes for contentment
impelled by nothing
more than
familiarity? “Nothing more than…” I say?
I don’t mean it, of course. I know better. I know…
at the very heartroot of familiarity is
“family”.

Routine relates us.

But now that is broken.
And so am I.
That little part of me that hates to admit to limit-
ation, to begin
with, is abashed
at how little it takes to throw
me off
…
way off.

Have I told you lately how much I
hate
this?
Of course not, you are nowhere
to be found, and I am dis-
traught over —
what?
A fracture in my routine
that my heart takes personally?
What?!

It is 6:20.
And it’s been weeks since I last caught
sight
of you.

I am a fool.

And would have it
no other way.