fugue

I was making you a tape in 1985,

which is strange because we hadn’t met yet,

because you were somewhere being whoever you were

at whatever age you were

while I was in my bedroom

with a receiver the size of a small country

and my finger on the pause button

waiting for the DJ to stop talking.

I had opinions then.

Strong ones.

I knew exactly what a person needed to hear

in sequence, which is to say

I knew exactly what I needed to say

and had found a way to say it

that didn’t require me to say it.

Side A was the argument.

Side B was the concession

that I was also a little broken,

but attractively so,

or at least that’s what I was going for.

I wrote your name on the liner

in my best handwriting,

which wasn’t great,

then crossed it out

because I didn’t know your name yet

and wrote “for you” instead,

which felt, at the time, either profound

or completely insane.

I was sixteen. Both were possible.

What I wanted to give you

was the proof.

Not flowers. Not a letter.

The sequenced, deliberate, here-is-who-I-am

proof —

that whatever you were looking for

was standing in front of you

in a too-big jacket

holding a TDK SA-90

with 45 minutes of evidence

on each side.

I would have been so sure of you.

It amazes me thinking about it….

I would have handed it over

with both hands,

the way you hand something over

when you’re pretending it’s no big deal.

The tape is still out there somewhere

in the amber of a year you weren’t in yet,

labeled for you,

already warped a little from the heat,

waiting to tell you

everything I’d figured out

about what this was going to be —

all that certainty,

all the boy I was and the man I was to become,

wheels turning, just hissing softly….waiting for someone to listen.