Potted Plants

The year we met I slept on a twin bed, and so we spent the nights on the floor instead. And you lived with your brother out in Queens. Some nights I’d ride 13 miles just to see you for a few hours. The night your brother pushed you through the screen, you said “I trust no one… no one but you and me.”

But every time you get you so upset with me, you hide and I can't help but think you think that I'm ruining your life. You swear it’s all-fine, but I swear it’s not. I say I’m sorry and you say OK.  

Lately you’ve just been so quiet, dear. And when we do talk I still can’t help but think of what you’re not saying. And every day you take these walks and I take my place with your plants on our fire escape. And In these moments, I can see our future, still obscured, but stepping forward:

A couple years from now I’ll see you on the street and with you will be your new longtime boyfriend. Will he be wealthy? Will he have picked up the habits you picked up from me? My words, my gestures. Will he be prettier than me? And I’ll have stayed tucked inside a footprint only 6 miles wide because traveling always made me feel so small. 

…and I know that’s how this will end, but I stay and I wait, because every now and again I’ll see a glimpse of “the old you.” And I believe that all the love I’ve ever shown will, in some way, someday soon, be returned. Returned to me. 

Someday soon, in some form, it will all return to me.