Many Old Nights- A Poem

I had a dream we were sitting in a kitchen

It was the middle of the night and we were talking

About old times, different times

The sound of the past in a remembrance sigh

And I said so many things, even commenting on the weather,

Avoiding only the painful sliver and simple truth that I was still in love with you.

You offered me a coffee

I don’t really drink it, but I said yes

Because that’s the strange thing about moments like that

It’s less about what you’re doing

Than who you share the moment with

It was pitch black, a cave in a cup, so unlike your hair that always

Shimmered gold

A yellow brick road, braids instead of bricks,

And the light that shined down matched the light in your eyes

As we sat and just lived

Just for a little while.

I asked how your children were

You said they were fine, they were thriving,

And that made me smile because

I never thought I was the type to be a father

But if I met the right someone then I might

I don’t know

For someone like you, I would try.

What was said after that, I’m not entirely sure.

I remember the stonework of the floors

The way the lamplight made bits of the wall glow

A strange bronze, a copper,

The mind’s half-remembered memory of what walls might look like.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it all ended then

If a tired mind thought perhaps

It would be better not to prolong such a tragic and

Lovelorn Pandora’s lost box.

In a real life now distant and long ago

We’d never needed to talk to fill any of our time

Your eyes always said enough and even now I hope

So did mine.

But no,

No I worry that isn’t the case at all

Not even if it was better and easier

And we were both happier that way.

Instead, I find it likely in that same old tragic sense

That in the dream, my dream with her,

My time came to tell her just once

With full intent and empty commitment

That I loved her

“Hello, I love you.”

“Hello, I still love you.”

“Just so you know, this cannot change.”

But I fear more than anything that I know myself

Every flaw that resides within me

And I think, sitting at your kitchen table

In the quiet

In the night

The time came for me to say any number of things

Words that have echoed and been ceaselessly rehearsed

Only to find that instead I simply stared

At her, perhaps at my coffee,

Watching every odd thing that might distract me

The way the liquid rolled in rings always pocketed

And as the dream faded into night

As a kitchen light became quiet thoughts and

Ordinary eccentricities

I watched her vanish,

The spark in her eyes, the slight smile drifting

Into mist, into a fog, into the past

And I woke up in the present, forgotten, unopened,

Set aside by old choices I hadn’t realized I’d made

And I wondered if she was happy

Before wondering just once

If I’ll ever truly forget what it’s like

To have something to say, to mean with all your heart

With everything you are

And say nothing.