When we were kids
you would chase me around
the block trying to kiss me
and giggle if you caught up.
I recall that you said
you liked my glasses
after I got my first pair.
You had missing teeth
and freckles on your nose
and a smile that looked like
flowers in bloom and somehow
I still remember your name.
I will remeber it the rest of
my life and I don't know why.
Maybe you still remember me?
I hope so, I really do
and I think if I hadn't
left that town...
Listen: Timing is everything.

I recall the look in your
eyes when you discovered
that we liked the same
Oasis song, I recall you
pulling me out of the store
we worked at during the
middle of our shared shift
to look at the brilliant colors
the pollution gave the setting sun
and saying you didn't think
any of our co-workers would
understand the beauty that
only you and I could see
and you looked at me with
your impossible blue eyes
and bit your lower lip
and I think I knew then
how you felt, but a few years
difference still mattered at
that age, and I was already
in love with someone else...
Timing, y'know? It's everything.

I loved you before you lived
and of course you never did.
We didn't even get a chance
to give you a name, didn't
need one yet.
Never would need to, in fact.
You were gone before
you were even here and
even though I never had so much
as one single interaction with you
I have never felt so sharp
a loss as I felt when I lost you.
It wasn't what was gone
that hurt so badly
it was the years and years
of what would never be.
Timing.
******* timing is everything.

There is a breath out there,
air, waiting for me to breathe
that will be the last one I do
and I'm running toward it
and I have been my whole life
and the people along the way
who I loved live in the air
I breathe in the interim
and the people I missed out on
or who missed out on me
live inside all that air that
I will never breathe.
I loved you madly in those
missed breaths, I hope you know,
but timing is everything.