Jameson Fitzpatrick
I take the worn blue towel from around his neck, hold its corners
tight together and carry it out to the balcony,
shake the clippings loose into the wind—silver filaments rising
and then eddying down again, a seed clock
bursting open over the thick
canopy of the park below.
In three weeks it's his birthday, his
forty-ninth, the second we'll have spent together
in this unexpected life nineteen stories up.
Where's my sweater, he might ask, air
streaming cool through the open window,
my glasses? The child I didn't have?
And I'll answer, Here it is, here they are: I'm
here, I'm here, I'm here.