I just want to say, right from the start, that I loved her.

Not in the neon bright light, two a.m. sparkling pavement, uptown New York City way. No, much more in the ice-cold Dos Equis’ beading in the summer dusk sunlight way, and in the way the sound they made when slid to us across scarred wooden bars.

Or maybe in the way she laughed when her fingers became tangled when she held a pool cue, and the way she didn’t care when she missed the ball completely – and then laughed some more.

But mostly in the way when faced with the poet’s choice of cowardice or courage, how she scratched furiously along the page, her thoughts spilling shamelessly across the white until she rested and read the words she had written, and when she knew she was no closer to immortality, the way she reached for another page.

In that way.