i have seen nearly every city/from a rooftop/without jumping
Perhaps it will happen like this.
It will be morning and the gray skies will be shifting into the painful pale blue of a robin's egg. The Woman will wear delicate silk wrapped around her neck and hair, and wind will toss the edges of the scarf into the sky to be lost in the glare of the sun. Her skin white against the soft charcoal of her coat, she will stand at the corner of Baker Street in calm defiance of the security cameras and she will wear kid gloves that may make it ever so slightly difficult to text.
But of course that won't stop her.
He won't ask questions and she won't offer any answers. She will brush her fingers against his, feather-light, just enough pressure to feel his racing pulse.
They will embellish the sidewalks of London together, elegant in their pallor, eyes bright, hair tangled with a playfulness neither of them will ever know. She will call them Gods among men. They will not speak; they will let their entwined hands do the talking, read each other's stories in the space between their fingers. People will look at them without knowing why. Art demands a second glance.
…
A poet can stick anything into the fog and make it look like a ghost.
But tonight let us not become tragedies.
…
Perhaps it will happen like this.
He will traverse the oceans for her and will find her in a white sundress with a fake laugh on her lips. She will be running from the thought of eternity and he will extend hands heavy with her dreams. He will tell her he's just making sure she's still breathing, making use of his sacrifice, his investment paying off.
Ambition is measured in regret.
But he will not regret the taste of her tongue or the traces of perfume—vanilla and snow and moonlight—beneath his fingernails. Not even when the walls of Baker Street close in on him and even John starts to notice he's constantly distracted. She will not regret the crescent scars on her shoulder blades and collarbones that fade within a day, too fast, or the hymn of his skin in the glow of a bedside lamp. Not even when a perfect blue-eyed seemingly fatherless prodigy tears her way into a third world hospital nine months later. She will name her daughter Ariadne, even though she cannot possibly know that this is how she will always find her way home.
…
Step into this
With your airplane parts
And repeat after me with your heart:
…
Perhaps it will happen like this.
A dozen texts almost sent and a body on a slab.
His or hers—it makes no matter.
One of them will be left, and will never stop hoping that this is just history repeating itself, will never stop hoping for one more miracle. And the hope will throb within their skin like blood pulsing beneath a bruise.
…
Cemeteries are just the Earth's way of not letting go.
…