Pre-Existing Conditions

Cleaning out the back of a closet,

a shoebox full of somebody else’s life,

his life, before me.

A grainy bar photo, cheap flash

caught him mid-sentence, looking

just off-frame, probably at a girl

whose name he’d forget by dawn.

The light, a raw halo on his hair,

made him innocent, or just

so very young, before the weight

of mortgage, before the socks

he leaves scattered like small surrenders.

He’s a stranger in that picture,

smiling a stranger’s smile,

and I know even less of him now

than I thought I did then.