Indifference

A Poem

Photo by Nazar Strutynsky on Unsplash

two sides of a coin —
my fluttering heart,
your castaway eyes,
no meeting in the middle.

i could have told you
how this game would end
because i’d played too many times —

but maybe i should have warned myself
because it was easy enough to see
where your gaze lingered.

perhaps i thought i had a chance
just because i was a distraction
from your upended life.

but, no, we worked in the same space —
yet we still never crossed paths
long enough to make a bond.

it was come and go, come and go,
all the time and every day
till the ties frayed beyond repair.

wouldn’t you try to save the threads
connecting you to another person
you might have cared for?

but that last time we met, oh,
yours was the gaze of a stranger
as if we’d never spoken before.