anyone can do it, and you wouldn’t
have it otherwise, like readily available
access to the internet, foreign travel,
contraception. You wouldn’t, really,
even given last night after supper,
when despite you regretting having come
without your glasses, undeterred,
your host — a good friend and in many ways
a most admirable person — pressed on
you photo after photo after photo
of Australia, the blurred exhaustive tour —
just to give you some idea — of the rooms
in his son’s new flat, the final straw.