Deep and unreachable in their darknesses,
capriciously childish and tender
when we write to each other,
while we talk about one of us
who is not around.
I grew up with some of them,
others, who I met as grown-up people,
I could unerringly pick out in their photo albums
on group pictures of their school classes.
They've always been like that.
They remember every detail I've ever told them about myself,
and even some I left untold.
There's always one of them around to remind me
of important things about myself
when I sink or soar too high
in my petty existential delirium.
Some of them had nearly given up on themselves
and on me: they fell in and grew together with their own lunacies pulling me and lifting me up
as a magnet picks up iron filings,
or a comb torn bits of paper.
People
that I love,
scattered along the meridians
and along their abysses:
among monsters of normalcy.
