Decades later
I think
I finally
get it.

Your broader experience
had offered you
numerous opportunities
for feeling disappointed.

You understood
better than me
that there are lots of options
if you are open to them.

You had forewarned
more prophetically
than
I had imagined

"People change,
situations change,
and things will never be
quite like they were before."

I had only
a single, deep experience
about which, amid ups and downs,
I was naively optimistic.

Then you offered me
an opportunity
to feel
deeply disappointed.

The situation changed.
I changed,
I opened up to options
and broadened my experience

discovering pleasures
I would not
have otherwise
known

learning and teaching
new lessons
about the benefits and costs
of relaxed constraints.

Now, years later,
after rereading words
that you and I
wrote then

I can better
appreciate
how different
our paths were,

release more
of the long shadow,
celebrate the
convergence of our paths,

and adopt
a more mature optimism
about the deepening
of our shared experience.