I walk

The streets laid out before me like a thousand unbidden promises.

Which way?

I could walk down here toward

The little antique shops which sell dolls without limbs;

Faintly scratched vinyl records;

A copy of “The Merchant of Venice” missing its last page;

Somebody else’s life.

But I don’t want somebody else’s life.  I want mine. That life I had with you.

I could go to the park.

Lying in the sun, knitting daisy chains and talking about the future that we both knew was scorched by lies.

I could go home.

But home is not down these streets.  That is where your home is; your home with her.

You call out as you see her, but as she turns her head to cross the road, you know it is not she.

I will go home.

I will lie tonight on the back garden and look up at the same sky that is above you.  And wonder if you are watching it too.

I write a pattern in the stars that tells how this girl met this boy. And though he wasn’t hers

He became hers.

I am that girl.

It turns out that you were never really that boy.