Drunk on Autumn and nostalgia,
and the fantasy of getting to see the turns my life didn’t take,
instead of a gentle surrealist bedroom farce.
Before long, she gets a visitor.
It’s the Ryan she first met, the one she fell in love with
when they were both tender and innocent.
As both a dramatist and a situational prankster,
the idea of talking to your love's younger self is a resonant one,
but let's up the ante:
Here, she will meet not just Ryan's younger self
but the woman he nearly went off with instead.
Along with his old lover and his younger self,
this is a meditation on love, but before long
it starts to feel as overstuffed as a family reunion at Thanksgiving,
and thus it gives me anxiety to think about.
So let's stop
and enjoy the regrets
that led us here
to this self-referential poem.
It will be about memory!
The ache of the possible!
The lure of the impossible!
It doesn’t contrast romantic possibilities;
I juggle them, until you’re dying for my younger self
to put his arms down.
That's how I remember, today.
Arrested, cardiac, wishing.
We all have the ability to time travel.
We all have the ability to time travel.