SHARED

1 2 2 Y S H A R E D R A F A E L C A M P O Like cigarettes stubbed out in ashtrays, trees crowd round these blighted ponds: dead, gray, askew. The whole world seems to be looking at you as you pick your way carefully toward me. It’s always this way with remorse: it needs to take away everything, even light, even beauty, even the brief delight that comes from owning our trivial deeds. A chill wind rises, rattling the leaves remaining on the brittle branches. Once, years earlier, in the dumb radiance of youth, we came here, if not to believe, then to ask ourselves if we could become what the other wanted so desperately. You picked your way carefully toward me, and I still remember the quiet hum of countless insects flitting in the sun, and the occasional calls of small birds whose eloquence was more than any words. We knew nothing about love between men, but these ponds shimmered anyway, and life seemed no less improbable or unsafe. You kissed me tentatively. In your face, I saw what has always been my belief: that somehow we too entered paradise. Years later, here we are again. The place is dead, the trees poisoned by human waste, the dumped chemicals of our avarice. It was never really all about us; 1 2 3 R I know that now as you look in my face and see what I hope is some of God’s grace. The wind blows again: cold, anonymous, yet not quite silent. You reach for my hand. Together we return from memory, I to your same smile, you to what in me you seek. We don’t believe; we understand. ...