One Last Grasp of You

A Poem

Photo by Hưng Nguyễn on Unsplash

there were so many endings,
and we could never get them right —
no matter if we wrote them by hand
or tried to live them in all the right ways

beginning with a conversation,
so clever we thought we were,
as if we’d made up the mating dance
or the very idea of subtle courtship

that first kiss would never have told us
how we’d mess up every line we’d prepared
or how we’d clumsily meet and depart
before there was even a reason for staying

your hand in mine felt so right, though,
that I was willing to overlook the red flags
like how you led me along like a child
or how you’d interrupt me mid-sentence

but let’s be honest that you knew
my every trick before I’d played it out
as if you could see past the careful mask
I wore for every stressful occasion to be had

love — that’s what we thought we had,
but maybe it was more a fallacy
than something magical or special,
a mistake everyone else makes…