maybe it was just bad timing
maybe 10 years from now,
we'll meet again in one of the most cliché ways.
maybe I'll be sitting on one end of a coffee shop
and you'll be sitting at the other
and I'll be drinking coffee
and you'll be drinking anything that keeps your eyes open.
I'll see you but pretend I didn't,
I'll take the napkin that was once sitting under my coffee and place it in front of me,
I won't write down my number.
I'll write about how my coffee matches your eyes,
dark brown coffee sweetened with a little too much sugar.
I'll write about the last time I saw you,
and how you said you'd never grow any ****** hair
but now you have stubbles resembling cinnamon bun crumbs swept across your face.
Maybe, just maybe, I'll look up from my napkin, and see you looking at me.
Maybe I'll see you looking at me the way Gatsby looked at Daisy.
Or maybe you won't look at me at all.
Maybe I'll just crumple up this napkin and throw it away.
(But I kind of hope I meet you at the garbage can, seeing you throw away a crumpled coffee shop napkin with scribbles all over the back.)

I shall gather myself into myself again,
I shall take my scattered selves and make them one,
I shall fuse them into a polished crystal ball
Where I can see the moon and the flashing sun.

I shall sit like a sibyl, hour after hour intent,
Watching the future come and the present go—
And the little shifting pictures of people rushing
In tiny self-importance to and fro.

I just hope you know
I love you
as much
as you hate me.

the way your arm would wrap around me
like a snake with a mouse.
I was never really certain if you were going to
embrace me
or
crush me to an oblivion.

there is always that space there
just before they get to us
that space
that fine relaxer
the breather
while say
flopping on a bed
thinking of nothing
or say
pouring a glass of water from the
spigot
while entranced by
nothing

that
gentle pure
space

it's worth

centuries of
existence

say

just to scratch your neck
while looking out the window at
a bare branch

that space
there
before they get to us
ensures
that
when they do
they won't
get it all

ever.