I cannot live like this anymore. I cannot live knowing that I might never have met you, That there are so many lives in which I didn’t And I thought that was okay because I never knew. Well, I suppose I did, in a way. There is not enough here for us all to live separately. I might have met you as a glimpse of hair across a room, A stranger in the street. You might have driven past my wedding And wondered vaguely who was getting married, And if they’d be happy, and if you’d ever feel less alone. Maybe I felt something too at that moment, Surrounded by those I loved and wondering Why it suddenly felt like a deathbed scene, Terrified that love was going to escape me in this life, Even though I already had it. Maybe I didn’t have it. I don’t like thinking that I could have loved someone else that wasn’t you. Even here, you’re distant. A friend. What a lovely death sentence. I want you closer, but not too close before I feel that I am outside a church With a confession to give that would turn God against me. In another lifetime, we’re the ones marrying. In another lifetime, I’ve done something right for once And that means you love me. We’re terrified, alone in a room and in love, Wondering if there are lives that we don’t have this And mourning an answer we already know. I can feel it. I can feel that I am being mourned. We’re in that room and it’s morning, And sunlight is streaming through your skin. I’m wondering in this life: Which one of us will die first? And which one will die without the other? I’m probably wondering if it’s inevitable. Or maybe I’m not. Maybe your love has changed me. Maybe I’m looking at you and thinking: What a privilege it is to be alive with you, Here, now, under sunlight and other stars we came from. How lucky we are to have this. I’d be right. Fortune does not seem to take kindly to this version of myself. I do not blame it. I have seen what I am not and maybe This is why I am atoning. For all the lives I could have lived but was too scared to. I understand my sin now, And it is not having the courage to commit.