Sometimes you return to me in sleep,
not as a memory,
but as though nothing ever ended.
There, somewhere beyond the reach of morning,
I am still the place your heart comes home to,
and you are still the country of mine.
Perhaps there is a universe
where we chose differently,
where time did not put its hands between us,
where the years were kind,
and love was allowed to remain.
In that world,
I still know the sound of your footsteps,
you still fall asleep beside me,
and the smallest things are ours:
coffee cooling between our hands,
rain against the window,
a silence that needs no explaining.
Then I wake.
And this life returns,
the room, the distance,
all the years that learned to live without you.
But for a few impossible hours
somewhere in the dark,
the universe makes a mistake…
and gives you back to me.
About this poem
A poem about lost love and the life that might have been. In dreams the relationship is whole again, full of small shared things like coffee and rain on the window, until morning brings back the distance and the years. It is for anyone who has wondered what would have happened if they had chosen differently.
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