by Adam Grabowski
It was perfect. It was everything.
It was a one night stand between genius and concussion.
It was the final and best draft of an anticipated eulogy.
It was the profound epoch of the personal ad renaissance.
It was conceived in a half-dream and written down before it faded.
It was the only reason she went home with him.
It was an eviction notice from a humanist, bathroom wall literature, a perfectly understandable suicide note, the last testament of will.
It was a letter to the fucking editor.
It was guaranteed tenure.
It was to be the greatest speech ever given for an Academy Award for color correction.
It was the great American email.
It was the ratified constitution of a love triangle.
It was the combat journalism of family court.
It was the money ticket, the gravy train, the sweet life, the big payoff.
It had spunk, nerve, moxie, guts, horse-sense, get up and go; it picked up the pace.
It was punctuation kamikaze, a syntax bitch-slap, a stiff kick in the nouns.
It was going to save the orphanage, feed the hungry, forgive and forget, let bygones be bygones.
It was God’s own justification for all the shit he’s pulled.
It was everything. It was perfect and it probably still is,
it was just misplaced in the mail, washed in the jeans, lost in the move, or given away like all priceless gifts are,
or maybe it fell out of your pocket when you pulled out your keys and was left to drift into the storm drain, where it waits for you still,
lonely and floating, holding tightly with the other debris,
terrified of the coming flood.