Four Years in May

Four years in May, 

a little longer still if 

you believe 

in something bigger.

I can almost remember watching

you leave, the way you

could not

get into the cab fast enough. 

Later I will

remember the sorrow on your face, and 

later still,

the heavy pit

of your stomach

the shame of a secret you kept

alone, 

the way you wanted to offer things

you could not, the mirror

of all the lives you did not choose

in that house near the river. 

I will forgive you,

of course, 

because there is nothing to forgive. 

It is not my life you held in your hands that morning,

although I wish

(sometimes)

it had been.

Four years in May,

an ending that did not yet know it was an ending,

a morning which was to me just another morning

and which to you was a thousand small knives offering you so many ways to die.

A Metaphor

It is almost metaphorical, a walk on the first day of the year.

The one-step-at-a-timeness of it, 

how the breath animates and 

invigorates the body, the quiet

of winter just before a storm

the sense of leaving something behind in the old year, 

the way a path offers

new-to-you views

of a world you’ve only seen in passing.

Leaving home and coming back

unchanged but also different.

You cannot unwind the steps you’ve taken 

any more than

you can unwind time.

The metaphor is there,

I think, but

I fear it is too on the nose to be good poetry.