This little piece of paper

Today I stuck my hand into the back pocket of my shorts and fished out this piece of paper. The way a magician fishes a colourful handkerchief out of a waistcoat pocket you were sure - as sure as you could be of anything - was empty.

Face down, the piece of paper looked like a receipt from some recent shopping expedition for asparagus or cheese or dinner.

I turned it over, impatient for it to explain itself. Why are you?

As I read, the poem unfolded itself, like an old man getting out of bed. And then the final three words. They stopped me racing through.

"You come too..."

My room creaked silent. It was a moment. I was ashamed. 

Ashamed that I had approached this little piece of paper as getting in the way, much in the same way I approach many other more important things as getting in the way of my day.

Like the audience watching the magician perform his handkerchief trick, I haven't the faintest idea how this little poem slipped its way into my life. Unlike the magician, I cannot, in the back room of some theatre with the stage lights now off, explain the magic away as illusion.

Or at least, I choose not to.