Doux

A soft epilogue

We have aged, and so have the streets
the same old restaurant,
cheap, too much oil in the food
that saw us through eighteen and nineteen
and twenty and twenty-one,
has renovated
its walls a bright, unbearable yellow.
We can't remember what colour
it used to be before,
just not this.

You are getting married in a year
but we don't talk about your wife.
You tell me about your new city by the sea
unfolding on itself for lack of space
and we laugh about your colleagues

and here, inside these garish yellow walls
we are soft and young.

Outside, the city ages with promise
a promise of growing old
of dust settling in our hair
and wrinkles
and I say, I hope
we will be in the same by then.

You ask if I love you still,
if there is anything left to save.
I say I love you like a brother.
But what I really meant was,
I hope no harm comes to you.
I hope you are met
with kindness wherever you go.

and in another life that is really a dream,
we sleep with our backs against each other,
in a very old house
while our children play outside.