If time had never perceived your Peter Pan smile, your wispy hair and dogmatic style

Were I to never glance twice

To embrace your every vice

Or hold your calloused fingers in mine

I do not assume this life would be fine

If where you stood, there was only air

Would my mind recognize the absence of you?

Or would I know despair?

Your evolving mind -

Steeled against status quo -

It would never know

The peace of sobriety

Or the loss of indecision

Swept in by a wash of Grace

What footprints would there be

For your friends to see

To be startled by the transformation

The renovation of Jesus Christ

In a life before which mimicked a shell

Hollowed but now hallowed

Without you, the fourth finger of my left hand

Would be barren

No convenant between two souls

Bound together, fed by the same bread

There would be no one to steal my breath

Or count the breadth

Of hours spent alone

No trombone laughter in my ears

No solid arms to belay the tears

No soft counting of freckles by my shoulder

No graying hairs as you grow older

That brown flecked gaze caged by crow’s feet - never to hope to see

In my arms, the soft folds of a baby

As I am now melded to you

Without you

There would be no me

So I will not say maybe until the day we

Say goodbye

When time carries us both away to…