When We Will Have Not

seen each other for ages again,
we might meet once more,
on a night like before,
speak sweetly of the ways
we were and weren't,
cry a bit about the ways
we said yes but never
had the courage to mean it.
Another day, we might happen
on each other at a wedding,
trust and glee all around.
We might recognize the face
of a person we fell in love with
when we were young,
but will see it aging now,
getting darker, full of loss.
We will wonder again
where trust and glee fled
after our own wedding day
so many years before.
We will say no again and
really mean yes again, and still
not have the courage to mean it.
We will wait for yet another
night again, yet another wedding,
wait to lose our breath again
for a second, remembering
the little details of our own young
dreams, the mediocre specifics of
their not coming true,
the everyday truths of our not
having any life left to breathe
back into dreams, no matter
how long standing, how essential
to our beings.
And if it comes to that--
when it comes to that--
years from now,
to watching, alone,
in the distance as the dreams
of others unfold, to straining
to recall what dreams feel like,
to noticing how few have ever
really come true, if we find
ourselves still waiting, still
choking on what might have been
and still not having any
courage to stop and mean it,
to say, "Stop. We must
go back and
find the courage to mean it now,
somehow,"
when it finally comes to that,
the very least we'll know for sure
is what it really will have meant
for our lives to have passed us by.

(2006)