To My Editor

I met you over twenty-six years ago.

Your strange name preceded you.

Your fanciful grandmother

had named you ‘dewdrop’, but

your matter-of-fact manner

was dew-like only in

its noticeable transparency

though it did hide your simplicity.

At that birthday party

of a new acquaintance’s

in a first-floor room overlooking

a medieval street,

a papier mâché butterfly

stuck vividly to a wall,

I asked to see you again.

You confess you were surprised.

Self-contradictorily,

you said later I’d always felt like family.

Your encounters with my writing

were undecided. My

nerves were jangly. At what

point you became the one

with whom I’d share my words

first, I can’t remember.

The inaugural sacrifice

you made was typing out

my dissertation on a college computer.

I’m beholden to you

for deleting unneeded words

when I can’t find a way of losing them.

You are merciless, sometimes

indiscriminate, about

banishing objects, even books,

you consider clutter, but

are judicious trimming content.

In spite, or maybe because,

of you astringently correcting facts, we have

been reasonably at peace for twenty-five years.