First published in City Series #5- Halifax by Frog Hollow Press, 2016.
Why Do We Like The Same Things?
I don’t know but there’s Robbie Basho and 12 string guitars and old time music and Sisterhood Feels Good. We both picked up the Carl Rutherford hat in the thrift store and now I have that hat and it looks like your hat and we have the same small heads. We wore yellow in the woods, blue pants when we went skiing, and when we sledded your fool self and my fool self fit together, and what great joy.
And you’ve got Lola and I’ve got Satchmo and you’ve got asthma and I’ve got asthma and you’re tall and I’m not so tall, and we both raised and killed our own birds, and made things from their lives so as not to waste them, as often we make things from the whispers of the earth, because we love the land we came from (even though it’s opposite land of the other) and we love the water that surrounds us (even though it’s opposite water to the other) and now we dream.
Once we smoked a wild strain of weed and both spoke in tongues, and I should have been scared but wasn’t, maybe for the first time ever, because of all the ways we find each other. Like when me and Rosa were walking up the hill (on what might have been the coldest day in February) and there you were, waving a stick and letting yourself be known. I was so happy to see you, appearing like a burst of flame between the open palms of a magician, and isn’t the world magic? And I thought “Come stand beside me and we’ll float up together into the cold lavender sky and the worlds between us won’t matter anymore.”
It isn’t that simple of course.
But what if it could be?
What if it were as simple as we like the same things?