Abscense

In another life, 

A parallel past, 

In our old age, 

Wrinkled and annoyed, 

I must have told you: 

“Maybe in the next life 

We should see other people.” 

You must have agreed.

Half-heartedly, distracted,

Attention already drifting.

Maybe that’s why, in this life, 

We could never make it work. 

Our time burned hot, 

Brilliant with the promise of more, 

Then faded far too quickly

With no reason I could hold onto.

That’s why, in this life, 

I met other people. 

I loved others, 

Without fully forgetting our time, 

Wondering what could have been. 

Why I lived with a sense of missing, 

Something, someone I could not name,

An unknown, permanent nostalgia. 

Now, in my old age, wrinkled and annoyed, 

I have to tell you that I experienced it: 

Life without you, 

A life of seeing other people. 

It wasn’t bad, 

But it is enough. 

This one lifetime without you. 

In the silence of your absence,

I whisper out to the cosmos,

Wistful that my words move fate,

Wondering if you are doing the same,

“In our next lifetime,

I would want to see the gray hairs

With you once again.”