We met between parenthesis.
A silence just long enough
for a kiss.
It never happened.
The beginning and end
of the New England summer curving
like your hips.
Like your cheeks
on either end of a smile.
I awoke for a second
on your couch
and left what I saw unsaid.
Putting words to that moment
seemed apocryphal.
In all the worlds
where I held your hand,
none were real,
not to anyone else, at least.
I still revisit those nights
in the shadows of a train.
The way you presented
a hoppy beer
with eyes so wide
their parenthesis could
not be distinguished.
Until a blink
washes those memories away.
An aside in the story
perhaps more interesting
but only so
because it isn’t the story.
Would it have been better
if you stayed
and I tried.
Would you have gone
to California
where every day is summer?
I still wonder if you miss
snow and the knit wool
accouterments
that caught falling flakes,
how warm your smile is
on cold nights,
and me. I wonder if you miss me.
I wonder if I exist
in those parenthesis
on either end of your smile,
my name on your lips.