I stepped out of the darkness of a weeknight
movie into spring dusk to a curb’s edge under
rose-gray light. Words had come to me
from you, to a screen in my hand. I knew
I was going to know you, and I understood
it would mean bountiful loss. I remembered
being very young, listening as a friend’s
mother showed us the then-new internet.
Ask for anything, she promised. Any word
or place or fear or story, all of it waits for you
in the desktop in the corner of this kitchen.
But what wonder she wanted from me I
couldn’t give. I understood then, as I
understand now, that there is danger in
beginnings, in the reasons that prickle
the skin, in the crystals that landed on your
brow the last time it snowed, so many
years ago now, the last time the air down
here was cold enough, and the air up there.