A rogue wave of old grief capsized me at the bar.
The night in my mouth had the names all wrong:

Herodotus.       Herodotus.
My chair was upside down

but I was making it look casual. 
Earlier, when my glasses flew off and his glasses flew off

and they did a little orbit around each other

before returning to our faces—

but that was before Herodotus. 
Herodotus tells us:

Human happiness never continues long in one stay.
I report my old love in longhand.

I report old grief in perfect sobbing penmanship.

I report my flight from the bar as a series of not-falling,
 
bat-wing-like movements.
Logographers, I need you! Graffiti artists, I need you!

Dancing man at the bus stop, I need you!
I have staggered free of the wreck of one year,

I can surely come clear of another.
This poem first appeared in the chapbook “In Case of Loss,” Embark Quartet, Toadlily Press