Spinning

It’s hard,
the forever of never.
I’d love to stay completely absorbed in the present,
but I think of you now and then, even though I try
not to listen to the voice reminding me dreams fade
into nights of tossed sleep, even now.

Your love, you had so much,
and it became his, for him.
You saying so sunk me in a soup of thick exhaustion,
watching you walk back from our dance to the wrong partner.

Silent healing for me, time taking care of wounds,
not quite, all of me forgotten on that last night.
I actually hoped you’d be coming back any day,
my first real love, the Caucasian girl with the Asian guy, in Wisconsin,
exactly as the story had been written for my mom and dad.
My anticipation of the identical journey,
a carbon copy blueprint to a happily ever after.

Hope speeds like light and so quickly spins away.
I reached to grab hold of you, the ring I missed,
your “no” the last syllable between us.

I listen to the noise of memory, wonder about wishes
played at peak volume in my mind for a long while,
think about the never tried to put us back together again,
the wasting of it all to nothing, an echo chamber of empty dreams.

We met in the record store.
Vinyl died’s a metaphor. 
It’s come back, risen from the grave,
perhaps buoyed by the rekindled memory and imagination of our collective youths.

I still have all our records.
We danced close.
Yes, I was always happy to see you.
No joke.
We were young.
It was easy,
until that stiff breeze blew between us.

Our album, it still plays
in memory,
the turntable still spinning a tale
where
I do hope you’ve lived a happy life for the most part ever after.