I would think about it sometimes –
that macabre statistical promise
in my small imagining of the universe.
How I would wear a lightning bolt
on a shirt I have dreamt of but never found,
and how in my interesting places
people would recognise the loss in me.
At some point, so I believed, I would have laid
my eyes on his – predicting myself such futures.
My expectations of the German Foreign Office were non-existent.
On whatever sides of our own walls we land on
we can breathe something out: something in.
I pictured myself as older than I would be
and the day was colder than I came to expect.
There was no rain to shine on the tiles
of the townhouse I didn’t own
and I am sorry to report
that I didn’t look at the world from an unexplored distance,
or put out new hands in search of the wonderful.
This poem was originally published in Issue 12 of Confluence Magazine