Things We Know By Heart

Sometimes I am afraid that the years in passing

will not be kind to us.

 

Time rolls relentlessly downwards, and

Minutes will weigh upon our skin like

heavy pendulums;

Your lovely breasts will sag, those high cheeks will

fall prey to battering winds and withering heat

 

My belly will grow round and strained from

Too many draughts of wine, whiskey, beer;

This thick black hair will become thin and

colorless,

No longer crowning the mottled skin atop my once

youthful, beaming face.

 

In this small moment I wish I could breathe

Remnants of summer evenings into your lungs

So during quiet years of knowing silence

you can sing stories

of things we know by heart

 

I struggle against measuring my life in

coffee spoons and

sunsets, dooryards, sprinkled trees.

 

But let me be naked now, and honest.

At this very crossroads

There is no us,

Just I.

I am at this quarter-century crescent, a flurry of

Frenzied motion because when you’re

All of twenty five years old, you should be an expert of

rolling with the punches.

I know patience. I know about flexing and swaying.

But here I am, sitting and writing a poem to

Somebody I have yet to meet, love, and share

Glasses of wine and sorrow with.

Our limbs are not intertwined, there are no

heaving breaths and fleshy kisses

There are no long echoing memories of nights

tangled in each other’s warmth.

Some things have yet to come; in time and good faith

We will etch marvelous things into each other.

When you finally meet me,

Squeeze my hand and whisper into my ear,

“Let it go. Let it go. Let it all go.”

We’ll smile and laugh, throwing Prufrock in the trunk

Of my cheerful silver Honda Accord,

Taking chase of velvet sunsets down alleyways,

We’ll disturb the universe and sing back at mermaids.

Those aged knowing silences, graced by dust from

faded muses

Will be heavier when we have already

Shaken the pillars of heaven with

the chimes of our laughter

over and over

and over

again.