in a different life
in a different life,
your words would flow next to mine
with the same scheme,
with a smooth rhyme,
your lyrics and decadence
proclaiming my relevance to their
existence.

in a different life
your eloquence would mix
with my broken syntax,
like needles on wax
and expose the allusions
of romances timed perfectly
in our compositions.

in a different life,
these hollowed out bullets
of letters and punctuation
wouldn't cause death but creation -
the manifestation
of two individually beautiful
fragments run-on
but given meaning by a semi-colon.

in a different life,
in a different atmosphere
where our paralleled bodies would interweave,
histories would matter less
than the volumes of stories bound in sheathes
like swords or sharp quills,
the thrills of the flirtation
of our energies
more addictive than the initial butterflies
or reality tv.

in a different life,
where you write too much,
and my hand gets fatigued,
where I speak in mixed metaphors
and indulgent discretion,
you are the footnotes of expert translation,
the solemn ear to my confession.
but in that different life,
there would be no sins for which to atone,
or reasons for unrequited feelings
to be left silent and alone.
in that different life,
the listed long complications screaming resolutely
would be laughed at and paid no mind
for their futility.

A different life isn't real,
but you are. and I am.
and the rhythms and literary expanses
and spoken diatribes of love, life, and general
dissatisfaction of anyone else -
are real.
but the more we confide and the more we delve,
the more we can't get over ourselves.

in this life,
we are just bad love poetry repeated
with images of different faces,
same verbs but different subjects -
and the same us
refusing to overcome the reasons
that we swim aimlessly in a sea of words
with no cohesion.