did you really mean what you said about sleeping and the tiger biting off your head as you slept
so that you died and didn't even know you were dead till you never woke up again?--

that's certainly a sad story, but it reminds me
of the mountain lion i saw coming to work last month,
the way it's eyes glowed green and yellow,
the way it looked up at me without thought or
consideration...

who was i going to pick a fight with now, right?

and yet here i am doing it all over again to myself,
maybe because there's no one left to battle who
wouldn't eat me alive,

but here i am thinking of meeting you at last,
thinking of telling you i'm excited, but apprehensive, that i'm looking forward to it, but
dragging it in my own way just because
there's no telling what's going to happen,
how you're going to react to meeting me in person
for the first time...

you're right, it might go terribly, it might be
uncomfortable... or still worse, it might be one
of those meetings that is neither wonderful nor terrible,
just one that's "meh," that leaves the both of us
disappointed and turning back to our precious
dating apps once more because what other alternative
do we have other than loneliness, or settling for
someone with whom we already know we'll be
miserable...

that shouldn't be us tomorrow,
we've come to far too settle,
that shouldn't be us tomorrow,
starting at each other trying to make small talk
wishing the other was someone else--