For S.

Rage sits on you like a second skin.

It’s a necessary gravity,

pulling your atoms like

an exercise,

 

but you are merry.

Bright like wet curls

and curious as a child,

your desk is unbound with aging dates

and tobacco;

it's stacked with books I lent you on

Middle Eastern conflict

under the high Catholic ceilings.

 

Who taught you to marry

sprawling formulae with

winding notes?

To love the spike of Jaeger

like a teenaged boy

and drudge heart-heavy

with the footfall of a man

into forgiveness? To know

that the ritual is bleak,

and not unlike a head bowed

in the act of remembering each time?

But this is almost too neat for you—

 

you get things whole and

uneven,

wretched

 

by your dogged focus in few places—

I can’t provide that at all.

That natural insouciance is

lost on me, but it hums around you

(just above the rage)

 

and you are warm from the tension.

Easily the warmest at the table;

the just-bubbling stovetop caramel,

a sweet flounce and garnish to the meal

cherished for its slow pour

and invariably

the crowd favorite.