I think it was October. I was fifteen
and you, whom I'd "meet" decades
later, had just been born! I took

the SATs, swooned over Rimbaud,
and walked the bank of the Charles
with John C------ and Josh G----,

both walking so fast, they clearly wanted
to shake me off, to lose me, as if I were
a policeman, or a much-younger brother.

Can't for the life of me remember why
we had been hanging out down there.
But the memory of their treatment is vivid.