A Certain Table, A Certain Tree

A Certain Table, A Certain Tree

Remember when we agreed to this.
There is no question mark after that.
Because I am talking to myself here.
Admittedly - it was many years ago.
You are to be excused from the duty.
Time erases many things, even time.
And as any doctor will tell you, every
heartbeat is unequal. Fingerprints --
really. One thing constant, the beating.
Yours has not stopped, nor has mine.
Beating and beating away in darkness.
But we have changed our addresses.
Our lifestyle would not be recognized
by the other. Recalled, but illegible now.
I trained myself to accept the inevitable
while I believed in what I wanted --
which will always be yourself. 
Today, I realize that you have done a
different task with yours, your heart.
You have managed to occlude it.
And I wonder if you should congratulate
yourself. I cannot know that for certain.
I have traveled one thousand miles
to be here at a certain table, under a
certain tree, at a certain hour, to wonder
which of us has been the greater fool.

I am no scientist. I am no pontificate
in these matters. I do know, however,
that if the sun, which has no personality
whatsoever, wanted to be late eight minutes
the world would freeze to death, in the next.
I have waited here beyond that, beyond thirty.
And so I concede your victory in frozenness.
My wish for you is not unhappiness, but glory.
I hope that the reason you are not here is
because you have managed to forget it all.
That you are feeling warmth.
That I have been usurped.
That, in your memory of me, you do not think me an idiot
for sitting here… waiting for what was not meant to b--
…wait.
is…
Is that the red scarf I gave her?
Is that you… running in front of a taxi?

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