c.

Not 23, ah, you see it was a mistake, it was not the twenty third page- I light the lamp, I glance below, I was thinking of something different, I am thinking of the way I want to say I am sorry…you see it is not very often that I encounter the moment, a moment, shared, when I felt alive and felt bad afterwards; I am sorry it had to be there, that it had to be with them- is it different? Sometimes I wonder and god did we fight! - she is a lion when she wants to be, I imagine you to be the same, though please do not tell her I compared the lion and the lioness. I thank you for what you have shown me, the incessant way you have made the moment yours, ours, both of us together have smiled under the same shared moon, but what is it which lurks in the shadows, separates me from you- dear have I forgotten the way you remember when I was younger? Time, inseparable from the moment…I am sorry, I apologize, a hundred times over- I am a man and a boy; I am being honest, I have tried, I try to empress you. I see you as the framed moment of a shared childhood, I see the way she smiles when she mentions the past you have shared- the night progresses, can I be foolish for just one night? But so many nights I have spent in tomfoolery, in the coming and going, the whistling and the drowning faces. You see a man sometimes get stuck within indecision, he becomes married to a thought, I am became married to the insufferable man I am at times- our mothers should have warned us of our fathers and how we become them at times- we do not, we only reflect the imperfection, the doubt which lives in our heart. Doubt, I am sure you have known, you see it was a moment of doubt and like a child I went with the kite rather then the hands of the father who had told me to slow down, to wait- grandfather calling from afar, did you tell him? We can hear the echo within but the translation is always lost. Your heels looked nice, it was nice to see you stand, and any man- the ivory falls, it is late, the cat sits and waits for her friend the sun- whether tall or not tall, should be thankful to stand before the endless way you are.

g.