We were supposed to mail a goodbye letter but I lost the stamp they gave me. 

You tell me that you are Grover Cleveland’s great grandson ten times removed, or something, the week before my last American history test, while gorging on lobster bisque and dunking your chicken into it. We are in your father’s kitchen. It is red, white, and blue, the entire house, not because you are patriots, you promise me, but because your father likes France. You do not speak French––not any of these Clevelands do––which you don’t think is a little ironic, judging the house walls, probably cause you’re America’s poster boy: varsity wrestling captain in your sophomore year; Mr. Abercrombie in your tight fit tees with a flannel thrown over; the boy who walks the girl to her door and shakes her father’s hand tightly; drives a red Chrysler with tinted windows so you’ll look like the president, which you almost are. You’ll take me to a fight––a boxing match––where the ring will be slick in browning blood of knockout punches, where the teeth fly like pebbles. You’ll never ask me about anything but my guy friends, who you’ll never meet, you’re always confused about my guy friends who are artists and how they can just be friends. I’ll always laugh about that––partly cause you don’t know that when we grabbed sushi for the first time, they all grabbed sushi three tables away, too, and texted me the whole time, chortled when I spilled my lemonade into your lap. Maybe this is why we didn’t work out, in the grand scheme of things. You are not an artist. But my friends laugh cause they think we’ll meet again, kind of like Grover Cleveland is the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms. I think it’s a mutual thing, though, the way that if a boxer knows that he’s about to lose, he’ll call his bloody nose as the withdrawal reason. In this way, I think you are nothing like your great grandfather tenth removed at all. I think we have both learned to lose.