Years go by; we discover and lose ourselves all at once. We decide we have suffered enough and leave. What makes us stay is when you know they haven’t given up on you just yet. When they are holding on to any shimmer of hope that they can be yours, how do you leave? When you are asked to wait, how do you leave?
Yes, we lose ourselves before we lose to love. And when you do leave, have you wondered what becomes of them?
“Everything we do is for our first loves
whom we have lost irrevocably
who have married insurance salesmen
and moved to Topeka
and never think of us at all.
We fly planes & design buildings
and write poems
that all say Sally I love you
I’ll never love anyone else
Why didn’t you know I was going to be a poet?
The walks to school, the kisses in the snow
gather as we dream backwards, sweetness with age:
our legs are young again, our voices
strong and happy, we’re not afraid.
We don’t know enough to be afraid.
And now
we hold (hidden, hopeless) the hope
that some day
she may fly in our plane
enter our building read our poem
And that night, deep in her dream,
Sally, far in darkness, in Topeka,
with the salesman lying beside her,
will cry out
our unfamiliar name.”
– Everything We Do by Peter Meinke