Couldn't help but wonder

Couldn’t help but wonder . . .

Saw those shots of your girl today

the ones you just posted -

her limbs drawn long,

just like her mom’s

they left no doubt.

 

And I couldn’t help but wonder,

 

- wonder at all the days that I had missed:

Did you nurse her at first?

Or did they pluck her straight away

from your motherly embrace

like so much cargo?

 

And what must it have felt like to be all alone again,

without that beautiful anonymity

which had gradually taken up residence in your life?

Butterflies at first,

before the head-down

promise crown.

 

Just cats,

then ,

now,

I am sure.

 

And I saw that her skin was not like mine at all,

not ruddy,

not a bulwark against the myriad rudenesses of Life,

but rather an elegant study of how the sun finds delight upon the surface of innocence.

 

And I couldn’t help but wonder.

 

There is, of course, that tired old question,

“What could have been?”

 

So why did I leave?

I swear to you now that I have no good answer.

And why didn’t I bring you with me?

 

But then who knows

what would have been?

Surely we would parted anyway,

- don’t say it �"

under less trivial circumstances.

 

And here is a secret:

you were my first �"

not chronologically,

but indeed, nonetheless.

and I know you don’t think that males think this way,

but we do.

 

And when I saw that old photo

that I had forgotten I had forgotten,

and felt the rush that lifted me clean out of myself . . .

I couldn’t help but wonder.

 

-

 

So I have my place now,

and you your own as well.

Love has found me,

inexplicably,

and Goodness, too,

and in this way I am lucky.

 

I only wish now,

that

- as a friend, mind you �"

I could somehow have spared you those chemical days in between.