All I've Got is Maybe, if I Ain't Got You Babe Poem
9/16/2014
Maybe you spend your Sunday afternoons with a smile.
Maybe you take an extra hour to get out of bed in the morning.
Maybe you brush your teeth and put your toothbrush back down into that 4-slotted holder that just seems to look more full with a 2nd brush.
Maybe you go grocery shop once every few weeks to buy romantic things like checkered tablecloths, fresh flowers, and scented candles.
Maybe you run out of **** and condoms more frequently now that you're with him.
Maybe you've forgotten what my laugh sounds like.
Maybe you don't agonize over what outfit to wear out on a Friday night because I'm not around to care anymore.
Maybe you no longer get poems written about you, not that you ever knew.
Maybe now there aren't consequences for forgetting to text back within 2 days to messages like, "how are you, wanna grab a bite to eat?"
Maybe you don't miss swimming around the pool at 3am talking reminiscing about each other's past we didn't get to be a part of.
Maybe you could have spent a week this winter sick in bed and had me bring you soup after I finished studying.
I'd tell you I bought it with a coupon and that the old-fashioned restaurant owner asked again if you were my brother or cousin because he didn't want to think you were my lover,
and of course you would laugh and laugh then cough and sneeze.
Maybe by now you would have formed a permanent imprint in the left side of my king-size mattress,
and picked out your favorite 5 pillows of the 15, rarely used - they look so dormant in that vacant lonely left side of my bed,
as if it had a wormhole that made it access:
a cold, limitless blackhole in outerspace.
Maybe you wouldn't have kept using,
and felt like you needed to move to New York to escape.
Instead you could have fled into my eyes,
that they say are the portal to the soul,
and let them gaze into yours as you'd make a steady embark to intertwine.
Maybe I wouldn't feel the need to immerse myself in academic studies and drinking at bars to keep as busy as possible,
because the one moment I allow myself to watch a romantic movie on Netflix,
I know I'll need to eat sodium-laden Chinese food to help me retain water so that I don't cry myself to sleep over you.
Maybe I wouldn't have had to bear my **** soul in front of an audience of about 35 people,
sharing the tragic afterthought of you in poetry form.
Maybe by now I would have figured out that...
Maybe you don't think about what maybe you could have had,
if maybe I could have had you babe.