time isn't kind or unkind.

I saw you on the street, two-thousand miles from where we'd known each other. For the first time since I'd stood on the curb of Mississippi Ave. and watched as you started your truck. It was packed with exactly one half of the things from our apartment. There was rain, but not any anger or sadness. Just a dissolving, as you went on to your next dream.

Then in Portland, Oregon .... here, in Portland, Maine.  The odds of it all.

Maybe I was just shell shocked, but it didn't feel like you. I knew it was. Undeniably. But you were just familiar, not the same. Almost like a brother of the man I loved.

I've seen you though, in other people. There was a line-cook who worked with me at the brewery, about the age you were when I met you. Just a kid, really, but handsome as all get-out. He'd give a soft murmur of appreciation on the days I'd done it up.  Once or twice he'd worn a Bukowski t-shirt to work, and I couldn't help but laugh. Bukowski, huh? I thought of you and the copies of Kerouac that sat on your nightstand.  

He'll be a heartbreaker. Not deliberately, not carelessly. But in the way you were -- just available enough for the women you love to cover the space between you. Open enough for a girl like me to try to patch the holes.

Anytime he caught my eyes over the stainless steel shelving, I felt my breath catch out of habit. A teenage feeling, about you more than anything. But when you were finally in front of me, the real you, I didn't feel the way I'd expected. The person I loved was somewhere, 3 years and four states ago. He'd left me, and our tiny apartment, with a beat poet book on the passenger seat.

(photo) on film with Pentax K1000 | gulls in Portland, ME | title in reference to this song.