Postcard, to a Friend from Twenty-Four Years Ago

They treated me for bipolar disorder. I wanted you to know. Although the doctors later said it was the Adipex-p and weed mimicking an up-and-down disease— it hasn’t happened since. I still think it was more than that. Hard to believe it’s been more than twenty years— that fourth of July, when I read your mind at the Washington Mall, and ran off to watch fireworks alone in the grass. It was wet, and I could tell— you thought I was magic. You walked toward me Christmas morning in the summer evening, said, didn't think I’d ever find you. You can see how the backdrop of that moment conspired to spell out fate: the night convincing, the air exploding in support of it, I came to— in a hospital, you still looked like Clark Gable, but your mythical gait was just a limp— you’d played baseball in college. My ESP had just been synapses cracking communal phrases inside my skull, masquerading as serendipity in wolf's clothing. all of it— an embarrassment. You stopped returning my messages, after I underlined phrases at random in a Chicago weekend newspaper, then tried to get you to believe with me. I drew a picture of Ganesha in the margins as further evidence of our destiny as gods. When the mind starts shuffling everything it's ever touched with Vegas-dealer speed, it doesn’t take much to get to a version of the story where we're Holy. You could’ve easily taken advantage, but you didn’t. I think you knew I’d have let you. Wish you were here.