—I WISH I KNEW YOU WHEN I WAS YOUNG 

 

 

It Was Fall Then

 

Sunset, your favorite time of day, never Sunrise. You tipped a cup my way and said, “Dawn here looks like it’s staged, too glossy, like a Hollywood set where every color of the leaves is fake”

 

But that weekend, when the boat tipped and the boy fell, you threw up lunch and saw things differently. A Kaleidoscope. Strange halos.

 

“That could have been ours,” you said, and meant it, grabbing my arm for the first time, as if it might float away.

 

We watched him flail together; his tiny arms flapping and flapping, tagging the water over and over. Troy, he might have been called.

 

It was Fall and every tree seemed made of rust. Not one of them moved a limb.