How I Was Wearing the Hood That Day

It was his birthday and his speech was running sour. Each of us had to become a famous old person like him, he was saying, famous among a dozen people or so. This was his advice from the age of ninety. We were drinking apple juice cut with Sprite.

There was cake, a dozen people, his speech. You, seated beside me, were still conscious, thank God. You had cake crumbs on your jacket lapels and were doing what you usually do at gatherings, enshrouding everyone with a look. It fit nicely with what our friend was saying about the possibility of a fog bank with evil intentions appearing at any moment. Or was it a seagull flying over dropping sorrow?

People said, “Oh now, not yet, mustn’t dwell.”

The times, I realized, are small because we are. Small, then pop, they’re gone. But then I looked out the window and there it was, the great hooded spring!

I grabbed your arm and whispered, “I am so in love with my piece of sidewalk!” To which you said something like, “Good.” Or was it “Good luck”?