In the market today, I met K, your friend From that time when we were, perhaps, More than friends, as I was hunched over Crates of plums, feeling for deformities In their flesh, as you had taught to me to

Years ago. And it has been years since I Have seen anyone, or anything, that may Have whirled around your world, in orbit. She said, “Hello, I guessed it was you, Even though you have changed a bit.”

We, then, exchanged the usual tokens: Pleasantries, interrogations with stock Replies, grins, comments on the price Of plums, and where we reside here, Anonymously, in this large city.

I didn’t ask about you, nor did she Volunteer anything in return, for I Am sure, she was a witness to our Parting of ways, our quick migration To different corners of this country,

Besides past is best kept in abeyance, If not buried. And strangers can’t Talk about old intimacies, which, If looked back at, with a sideways Glance, seem strange and devoid

Of meaning. Memory is not a view That one might look at in one’s dreams, But these seemingly innocuous habits; How to tie shoelaces so that they don’t Come undone when running sprints,

Or how to pick and chose plums, By their color, by feeling their flesh. I could do neither, before I knew you, And now having been taught how to, I can’t seem to forget, even if I want to.