we wrote love poems on the palms of our hands & shook, as
if we were making a pact of hearts & hopes at a crossroads. we
hoped to find the questions. the answers we beautiful but
fleeting, carried on butterfly wings that, like time, can never stand
still.

we held hearts instead of hands, and kissed love instead of
each other. i had a theory, and you a counterexample. "love," i said,
"is simpler and more complex than calculus. if we can't figure out our
simplest enigma, how can we know why the earth spins?"

(i know that some things are beyond reason, beyond hope, beyond our
very existence. all you said was that maybe the most simplistic is the most
complex, and that perhaps some people don't know what they want.)

i didn't. all I could say was "when was the last time life took you
over to the counter, lifted you up & said 'pick out the one you
like'?"

stalemate. then we wrote more love poems on the palms of our hands—poems
of a love misguided, misdirected, misinterpreted,
misjudged, mistaken…

but definitely not missed.