Your scarf on the sidewalk outside the Starbucks on Main. A yellow molted message two minutes too late. The smell of weed still on it and in it. A crossing signal red-handed halfway up its pole. Nobody else around. That was in February before the nor’easter shut out the lights for eight straight days. I didn’t go looking again until the morning of the parade. Crowds promise so much but deliver only numb knees and invisibility. A horse unmounted by the oil lamp at the corner of the commons. Its hammer head bowed over a child’s sneaker. I was pushing through a barrel of shoulders when singing arose and I knew the words this time so why not? I was singing too when the first float floated by. A home-sized cauldron overflowing with coins and waving rainbow ribbons. That was when I thought I heard your voice and spun around to see. I’m sorry for time’s passing. My neck itched, so I unwrapped it. Look at all these drinkers of black ale with their stubble and their greens. Why does no one know where you are and whether it is cooler there than here? I want to tell you things I’d like to think you’d be happy to hear, even though I know they are mostly to make me happy, mostly to make me feel better about me. So what? Here I am dragging around this barely-there impulse to tell you that the tiny something we shared years ago is still here. Still here at a parade in almost-spring while I wear a scarf I found in the street.

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