If I’m not mistaken,
I saw you today,
pale but golden,
flimsy
yet rooted to where you were standing,
neck bent,
looking off into the distance.
I know I am mistaken,
seeing you today,
so many miles away from where this could be true;
but the truth is,
I keep seeing you.
Reflected in every dark head of hair,
shining through every silly, crooked smile,
every turned back
becomes your broken one,
and I am scared
every time it happens,
skirting around the corners
with my eyes trained on your shoulders,
waiting for them to
snap
and turn towards me;
scared
of how wrong I am,
to see those shoulders turn with someone else’s face
held aloft on that neck;
scared
of the strength with which I pull the door open
and escape each facsimile of you.
It’s sad, really,
I know this,
involuntarily shrugging it off,
excuses ready-made,
for I know this will fade
in time.
It always does;
the shock of a new place
makes me run back into old ways,
and soon you’ll be gone again,
no more shadowing me,
no more appearing in every face,
no more escaping
each metaphor,
each reference made;
soon you will fade
and I will move forward
into that sunset,
the one that you see when you stand like
a cowboy,
crooked,
bent,
head tilted,
eyes transfixed.
And I,
unable to help myself,
am transfixed too,
even as I move on.