I know your mind

like the back of my hand

and can see it holding yours

like we did at age ten

laughing maniacally on the playground

as we flew through the air

and the swing approached

the point of no return.

We would scream with delight

to answer the roaring ocean

never caring to wonder

or addressing the notion

that one day our lives would

send us far away,

two ships diverging

to return another day.

Did you think of me fondly,

or maybe not at all?

A sporadic wondering,

a memory slight and small

from a past life to which

you’d never return,

the past where it belongs

having no need to yearn.

I failed to notice

til I was too far gone

that the dulling aching told me

I was not meant to belong

where I thought I should go

when I dreamed years ago

two kids just wondering

how to move on

Did you imagine another life,

full of opposing choices?

The ifs, the wonders,

where you would be tomorrow night,

if only you had chosen

left instead of right?

Am I there at your side,

in the quiet, in your dreams

bursting with unbridled joy

threatening to tear life at the seams?

I don’t know where you are

and refuse to cease wondering

what our life would have been

my heart knows the thundering

quickening, reality of just seeing you

and if it were real I might break

so my imagining will have to do.