For D.K.

For D.K.

The last time I saw Dan in person
he'd just pulled a knife on some guy—
this was Thailand, twenty ten or eleven,
New Year's night in the town of Chiang Mai.

It's important to start with the knife.
We were both volunteers in the Peace Corps—
we weren't saints but we wanted a life
that held meaning, but Dan had at least four

or five different drugs in his system.
I miss him. Years later
he wrote me and said how he wished then
that I was in trouble—he'd brave fate or

whatever and save me. He wasn't always kind,
but there was this vision of life he kept trying to find.