1.
"In the future," she said,
"you'll see something similar,
a group of twenty-something-year-olds talking,
and think of your past self as sweet."

If this is true,
what, then, will I have lost?

2.
I sometimes dream of a flawless garden
emptied of philosophies,
all flowering assured.

Finding myself back there someday,
will it be the same
though I'll only see

the unwatered bits baking in open sun,
the unlocked, rusting gate
the gardener – drunk on the job –  left open?

3.
I resent what she said.
It suggests
that the older I get,
the less I'll see
of an increasingly disliked present,
and I can't dislike the present;
it's all that's ever here, there,
anywhere.