I knew you when rain fell like pearls on your cobbled sidewalks, a skinny doorway where the streetlight smelled of the sea, Chimay beer, Dover sole, where the alleys and shops were safe as sleep warm as sex where trains ran on time and we all took time for one another to enjoy a joke or a smoke, where I waved to you from the plane, promising we'd be together again soon when we would hold hands and stroll in the afterglow of being connected which we were--a rare and beautiful feat to say I knew you and I loved you just the way you were