The poem you wrote
thirty years ago
that you showed me
twenty seven years ago
has stayed with me since.

It made me think
about gender politics
in a way I hadn’t before
at a time
when I was young and impressionable
and easily turned on to new things
(the poem turned me on
too
– or maybe it was just you).

I don’t know
if you knew
how powerful that piece was
to some random boy you shared it with
in your dorm
back in college
in a prior century.
I thought that you should.

I just stole
from that poem you wrote
thirty years ago.
I hope you won’t mind
but I doubt that you’d notice.