it’s hard to live in the present
when my love is present tense
and all the memories are past.
I’ve been sitting on the curb
on the street where we last parted
watching the cars zip by
waiting for you to come along
and take my hand again.
it’s been raining and I’m cold
and wet and I realize that if
I stay out here I won’t survive
yet moving feels like a betrayal.
but lights glisten on the puddles
in the asphalt and I want things
I want you and I just plain want,
so I get up and go about making
my life up from nothing.
first comes school and then work
the typing alone in my room
and serving coffee to strangers
who don’t see past my half-smile,
second comes climbing walls and
trips up a mountain and
the new thrill of lips to a microphone
my own voice coming back at me
through the speakers and money
jangling in the tip jar,
third comes writing all the memories
I never thought I could put to the page
along with dreams I’m scared
will never happen but here I am
writing them down anyway.
perhaps fourth comes an apartment
in a place a bit farther away
a place where I get up in the morning
stretch my toes in the sunlight
and ask the sky how you are
for it sees you more than I these days,
perhaps it is pulling on clothes and
brewing a pot of earl gray
sitting down at the little table
steam curling, kettle warm
setting out two mugs, just in case
just in case you walk through that door
that I just can’t stop watching.