I like the color of your sweater and the stripes on your sleeves and I especially like how the ends fray and the gray looks more like milk than it does a rainy day sky or a weatherbeaten road.

2. The reason I stepped back was not because you smelled funny, or that I was shocked to find you there, but because the air condition was hitting me right on the shoulders and I left my red sweater at home.

3. Okay, so maybe I was a bit shocked at finding you there; it’s just that you’re the first one who’s ever bothered lingering at the poetry section besides me, and I’m not good with surprises; in fact, I hate surprises.

4. But you’re a good kind of surprise.

5. I like your glasses. I used to have a pair just like them before someone removed them and told me that I should learn to see differently. Things have been kind of unclear since then, but I’m learning how to hold onto the side rails.

6. I hope you’ll let me remove yours, too.

7. Your hair looks like a bird’s nest. I wonder if you’re hiding life or pieces of green bottle in there. That’s a lovely shade of brown, by the way. I’ve never seen chocolate curls before.

8. Do you think that if a pine wants to, it will grow until its branches poke holes in the sky for stars and pinecones to fall out so we can catch them in our palms and compare who got the most scratches and who caught the most stardust?

9. The book you picked up happens to be my favorite. If you turn to page 118 you’ll find a poem about churning seas, angry thunderclouds, and a drifting boat that lost its sail.

10. I think I finally found my sail.