In 3150 BC, you crowned me with lotus.
Then said I made you look too mortal.
In 2500 BC, you swore to build me a
monument. You did.
Then sealed someone else inside.
In 1200 BC, you blamed the gods.
I blamed you.
You said ‘same thing.’
In 44 BC, I warned you not to go.
You wore your laurels anyway.
When they stabbed you,
you mouthed my name.
But you didn’t say it loud enough
to survive.
In 73 AD, I poured wine into your open mouth
while the city burned behind us.
You said you’d die for me.
You meant later.
Much later.
With someone else watching.
In 245, I don’t talk about what happened.
In 810, we met in a monastery library.
You touched my wrist over a psalm
and whispered heretic.
I thought it meant holy.
You watched them exile me
with your hands folded like praise.
In 1207, we shared a bed during famine.
You bit my shoulder in your sleep
and murmured it was dreaming.
When spring came,
you left with the first ripe fruit.
You didn’t even wake me.
In 1258, you said the library was sacred.
I said ‘So am I.’
We hid manuscripts in clay jars
and told each other we’d survive.
When the city fell,
you were seen fleeing with her.
You left the books behind.
You left me behind.
History lost us both—
but only one of us remembered.
In 1462, you pressed a seashell
to my palm like a vow.
You promised to return before the tide turned.
They said your ship shattered
like a wineglass on coral—
I drank the ocean dry waiting.
In 1500, you said I looked like rain
the year the fields drowned.
We laid together in the lotus marsh
until your father summoned you.
I lit paper boats for every lie you told,
watched them drift toward a place
where girls like me
become folklore.
In 1505, you called me the sun’s daughter.
Then vanished before solstice,
left me to climb the mountain
alone, draped in gold I couldn’t eat.
In 1593, I was the widow with ink on my teeth.
You kissed me behind the theatre,
called me muse like it meant yours,
then left a sonnet in someone else’s corset.
I caught the fever,
but it wasn’t the one that killed me.
In 1619, I whispered your name through a veil
as we rode separate carriages to our arranged marriages.
You blinked once.
I spent the next twenty years
treating silence like a sentence.
In 1806, you said we’d run away to Vienna.
I waited at the station for two days.
You sent your regrets
on someone else’s handwriting.
In 1865, you sent me a letter from the battlefield.
It said keep living.
Then you died
with someone else’s locket in your fist.
In 1915, you wrote: ‘I miss you when it rains.’
I read it under a leaking roof.
They found your body days later
with a picture of me
folded into someone else’s letter.
In 1933, we wrote to each other from opposite cities.
You said the distance was killing you.
Then married someone local
so you'd stop dying.
In 1942, I woke up mid-war
and realized we’ve done this before.
You looked surprised.
I wasn’t.
In 1963, we kissed in the back of a Chevrolet
and you said you felt safe with me.
Then you enlisted.
Then your birthday flashed on the TV in color and static,
and I understood the difference between
missing and gone.
In 2024, you told me I still think about you.
I asked in what way?
You said in the way you remember a dream
you can’t explain.
I laughed.
But not because it was funny.
Because I knew I’d spend three more years
trying to wake up from you.
And still—
I keep loving you.
You keep
reinventing new ways
to leave.