and i miss him

walk slowly backward

so as not to alert the ghosts

to your presence,

because they didn’t expect to see you

again, so soon really,

they thought you were long gone,

embraced by the future

inevitably created by

the unwitting passing of time

23,36,45,49,60

he stands safely ensconced

with the version of me

that liked eating bagels 

on a Saturday morning,

doing dishes and listening to "Stairway to Heaven" again --

they don’t notice me and don’t know

that I know that this isn’t their future

1,2,5,16,18

and I desperately miss the man who came into the kitchen

and usually didn’t have a bowl of chicken noodle soup

because he was eating with or had eaten with Ed

and laughed with delight at the slightest provocation

because he knew we loved him so very much

and we thought the forever-future contained his smile

and that he would of course be there to watch us get married

and he would know our others and

and he would know our children

and it never occurred to us that he wouldn’t be there

and I watch him sit at the old white island counter

with a sixteen-year-old who can’t see beyond

the importance of being cast in a high school play

and he massages her shoulders and fills her with love

and I wish I could tell her

that she should sit there 10 minutes longer

because the future is a fickle thing

27,18,15,5,2,6

and I will never forget

the little girl

who paced and paced and paced,

wearing a groove into the floor

in front of the wall that was a mirror,

two of her grieving and muttering

because he wasn’t coming back --

she sits in the back of a car

in her favorite dress

and sings "Eagle’s Wings"

and I watch her and am glad to know

that she knows, at age 6,

what it is to love and be loved

26,23,16,6

and it’s so very, very easy to sit in the past,

to pretend to be still and walk backward

slowly so as not to alert the ghosts

to your present.