There is not a day that goes by where some part of me is not deeply saddened knowing life will end.

I think this is part of why change is so hard for me-- it is not only, "Look this new scary exciting thing!"-- but also a true and final ending to a way relationships are constructed.

I don't know why seeing this as a circus,
makes me sad,

but I know that gathering everyone in one room is not something I can have.

Watching our time literally drip away,

while we've paused and tried to freeze the cadaver in case someday,

someone learns how to revive a heart.

Love in the time of
you and me;

for one of the only instances
I know my mind is slowing, and I am only thinking of your smell and the way your skin is always so soft.

I am only feeling your body and none of the weighings and racings of all the days
I am present and here and very much with you.

You make me stop leaping forward and forward again, and for this I am grateful.
My mind admonishes me for pausing but
with you in this room

It is satisfied that you are what time waits for and I can
breathe and I can
sleep and I can just be here.

If I were somebody else

Maybe we could have

traveled to the far-away places together

and

every time they said this was once in a lifetime, we would smile at each other

A corner sad smile

knowing they might be right but we would make them wrong because we chose it.

Knowing that we must be so lucky, because

in the parallel path

of a life with a different bend

maybe some other us wanted what we had,

but the things they promised would never get in the way, somehow did.

Maybe we would meander and explore and relish in waters that were clear

and went on for miles. And we could just be.

And it would not be so hard to keep all the pieces together because we already would know the broken and fractured and vulnerable places, and there would be nothing left to be afraid of.

Maybe we would be spontaneous, and we would have been young for longer than we deserved to be.

You would have sparked me with ideas and convictions and I would be in awe of how you were so aware of who you were and who you should be and could be.

How this world should and could be. And you would burn with passion and vision and I would be inspired.

I could see it. How this could go. If I chose radical action and if you chose me.

We could live this life fast and with purpose and we could

be revolutionary.

Maybe eventually, we could have even grown old. And it would not hurt so much to let go of the possibilities any more, because we took every opportunity. Every risk. Every one. And we would read and write and remember not one part or piece, but all of it, and we would have two memories of one life, and we would not be afraid of losing it to the age because it would be ours and nothing or no one could take it from us.

And I think we could have been happy then.