Delayed a year by COVID,
I’m even more excited to go.
Except —
there’s one person I dread seeing.
One person – not bad odds.

I’m past mature now.
I can do this. I can smile
politely, nod, and make a beeline
for a friend. Why should one person
spoil my fun? One person
who really doesn’t want to talk
to anyone.

Still, I know she’ll be there.
She won’t need to point out
that she hasn’t changed at all,
that she still wears a size 2.
That will be obvious.

Just seeing her, I’ll plunge
into my old panic –
like the churning stomach
when a teacher asked,
Who wants to give the next 
book report? No one else
can make me feel so insecure.

But I’m the adult here. I should
take her hand and drag her 
around to greet all our old friends. 
Too bad 15, 16, 17-year-old Alarie
can be as just as stubborn
as she is shy.
                        

Reading after dinner, I reach for my glass — 
find a fruit fly floating 
in my lush, French pinot noir, 
one of our wines of the month from Underdog. 
(I’m not making that up.) Now the underdog 
is little FF.

As I tip the wine toward my mouth,
I keep watch. I don’t want to swallow him 
any more than I want to sacrifice good wine. 
Every time the wine comes toward me, he floats back. 
Hello. Goodbye. Hello. Goodbye.
I try to catch him on dry glass — 
offer escape if he’s alive.

I dip a finger in and scoop him out. 
He staggers over soft hand, hard nail. 
Is he drunk or just half drowned? 
He struggles to flutter wings – too soggy. 
I blow on him, trying to help. 
My gale force carries him off.
He lands on my lap throw – 
a wine-colored desert. 

He wanders up and down dunes, 
away from me, then back       for ten minutes. 
(Probably forty years to a fruit fly.) 
I blow more gently. 
Come on, little buddy, I whisper. 
(Wouldn’t want anyone but him to hear.)

He lifts off!