I just want to go back
and wrap my toes around
the cold white metal
of the table’s legs
and curl up in the sunshine
under the Crayola red, down comforter
and listen to the crinkle of the Times
and day dream
I want to go back to when
the future laid itself out to us
only in our minds
when we had nothing but potential
I want to go back
before all the gray hair
and the belly hanging over
and the age on your elbow
and the grief.
I want to drive to San Francisco
without stopping and with butterflies in my stomach
to see you again
and taste what the city. . . this life . . . you . . .
have to offer me before it’s even in my mouth
I want to hit reset
Start over
Call a do-over
and be young again
and worry about things that don’t matter
but feel like they do.
I want to relearn,
I want you to teach me again,
that everything’s going to be okay
without my later being able to say,
“I told you so”.
I want to be young again
and twisted up together
wound around in newness and love
and not contorted in your arms
trying to put everything back together
the pit of my stomach saying it’s all just too broken
So, let’s go back there.
I close my eyes as you lay in my arms snoring
like you did when we were kids
and I pretend and I will myself back there
back before weddings and children and lies and loss
any time with you, any moment
before this loss
before this life of ours kept crashing us against the rocks
before this,
when we knew how to swim.
I close my eyes and there we are
in the apartment with the red table with the metal base
and the Murphy bed with the red comforter
and we don’t know yet
and we don’t know yet
and we don’t know yet.
and then back here, I squeeze squeeze squeeze them shut
and I will myself to sleep before they open again in this darkness
in this same town, only hipper
in these same bodies, only older
in this same loss
in this same loss
and we don’t know yet.
Stunning. Powerful. Pandora’s-box-like. The lure of “the way we were”.