I bought a tome of koans and, in it, found a poem written by a man I’d met just once. He intimidated or irritated me, I couldn’t tell which at the time, but we didn’t forget each other. In the months since, he has smiled at me more than strangers do, has held the door open and abandoned the sharp breaths that introduce questions. A mouth like a high hat. He never asks why.

Back home, a woman screams on a mute television in my father’s house. In my mother’s home, I watch the first of three acts of a crime show dramatization of my life with that plaintiff. My mother contracts and shrinks, turns off the television on what she imagines to be my behalf, and I never see the ending. I never see the ending, so I write my own, over and over. My sweetheart tells me she wants a warning label tattooed on her hip; I say I want another poem tattooed on my thigh. She asks which one and I tell her the title of the piece by my half-stranger, but I don’t tell her anything else. She always asks questions. I love her and I love his unfinished symphonies so differently. The movements come on so quick.

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