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.