Like the pennies saved in a child’s bank

memories of him were stashed on a shelf,

treasured, yet forgotten,

in the helter-skelter of life’s frustrations.

Fate, with her enigmatic sense of humor,

cares little for our attempts to shelve life;

she weaves a web

to capture and exploit with her machinations.

Friends, new and old, gathered to celebrate

continued survival with clinking highballs,

brown-bottled beers

and stolen cigarettes smoked in the night’s air.

Music played an accompaniment to the voices

that filled the room with crescendos of laughter

and splatters of quiet talk

tucked into corners and whispered like prayer.

We arrived separately, completely unaware of

the six degrees of separation that brought us

to the same place,

like linked stanzas from an unknown poet’s rhyme.

The back of his neck caught my eye,

(how odd, I thought, that I instantly knew him)

and I magically transported

with vertigo-saturated speed to another time.

His bed, a tangle of sheets still warm from passion,

crackers and peanut butter, rum and Coke,

an over-filled ashtray,

the signs of our recent rendezvous.

He held me as I kissed his neck, marveling

at the downy hairs along the side,

the only softness

on his body’s hardness of muscle and sinew.

As I followed him out the door I studied

his neck, enraptured with that space between

his curling, dark hair

and the top of his snowy white t-shirt.

Back at the party, he turned, then smiled,

our eyes met, locked, as our bodies moved

to that inevitable conclusion:

Fate’s ultimate plan, a reunion, her unavoidable concert.

.