I realize this was written a few years ago, and of course you know the ending, but the story, taken with other contemporaneous poetry of yours, is so resonant...

This reminds me in theme, though certainly not in design, of something I wrote last year called "Too Close in Time"; a fragment of which:


I bought you a bracelet to
Brighten your wrist
I heard not one word that
Passed through your lips
In some parallel universe your
Footsteps follow mine
But we're too many worlds distant and
Too close in time

And by the way, parallel lines can meet; see "Broken Parallax" from 1990...