i see now my biggest fault is believing in
forever.
you would sit across from me, sometimes loudly, sometimes
not—as in, sometimes we would simply
sit and memorize the way the other chews,
how a hand grips
a hammered piece of metal.
you would sit across from me, and no matter that
the place changed, you made them all the same.
when you see a flower growing through a
crack in the pavement
every day, you stop wondering how
it persists, only notice it when
it begins to die.
you would sit across from me and i would
come up with new questions to ask you and
all this time it seems
i did not ask the right ones.
i suppose i should have let your edges blur
a little in my memory:
should not recall so clearly
the way your fingertips flexed to
hold a fork;
should not know so definitely
how your mouth twitched in a smile when i said
something funny between bites;
should not love so deeply
that i was the only person in the world
you wanted to eat breakfast with
week after week,
for all eternity.
this morning i eat breakfast alone,
and i catch myself leaning
forward as if you
were across the table. sun streams
through the window and seems to
pool around the space where you
should be.
i am sorry i looked too closely and yet not
closely enough.