Remember when you changed

Remember when you changed
And I didn’t change with you?

When we met again
It was as two strangers
passing on old streets

And
feeling a twinge of familiarity
As if two souls once magnetized
Recognized

that once they were one.

Low hums shivered between us
Too low to hear
Too loud to ignore

But we smiled politely
You tipped your hat
And I inclined a smile
Thinking…
what a nice person you might be to know

And we walked on,
forgetting we had ever known everything there was to know
of one another

Remember when you went to New York and changed without me?
I stayed
and you went
and then came back

But not all of you came back

I met you at the train station and
Saw the way your face had grown older and how
New laugh lines had grown in places I didn’t remember
Laugh lines from another,
Love lines from another,

I offered you a language only known between us,
and the words you gave back dripped in condescension
you poured them as a curse

and the silly, shared so as to become sacred,
became the ludicrous, tolerated as out of respect for the dead

and so I changed without you too
I grew laugh lines from another,
Love lines from another

Sometimes we pass on the street

And I think what a nice person you might be to know