Years.
What does a year mean, when there seem to be so many?
We read about them, cast them aside like old photos
Nobody cares to see
And you've already uploaded them so why does it matter?

Occasionally we'll select a year and savor its memory,
And it is the sweet, deep taste of 1997. Or was it '98...?
Sometimes it's hard to tell, sometimes it doesn't matter.
Years can be like lakes, small on a map but to the hapless swimmer,
Boundless.

We struggle to rationalize, to quantify, to measure
But how do you really measure a year?
How about love?
Yeah but after we saw Rent together you didn't talk to me for a week,
And when you did, It was to say that your mother was dying.

It is with all this in mind
That I see you from across the Deli section, head bowed,
Trying to make the all-important decision
Between one low-fat, sodium-free organic granola
And another.

I wonder what the years have done to you,
How they've kept you company,
Who they've dropped on your doorstep.
My imagination fills in what occasional party encounters
And awkward facebook birthday messages cannot.

I pause for a moment- you've chosen your granola and moved on-
And wonder if I should do the same.
I do not know if you saw me,
Or even if you would recognize me,
But something keeps me from going up to you.

It is the weight of years, and how they have put a silent barrier between us
Deeper and wider than the biggest lake.
And all those years, in forgotten photographs and smudged journal entries,
Each one becomes a story of the people it changed,
Of a woman in a grocery store
And the man she used to love.