There are two roads tonight.
One smells of rain
and the other of someone
I haven't met yet.
Perhaps she is walking there,
somewhere beneath the same tired moon,
carrying a heart
that hasn't learned my name.
And perhaps, for once,
love is coming towards me.
What a terrible thought.
I have spent so long
learning how to survive without it
that the possibility of being loved
feels almost more frightening
than being forgotten.
So I stand between the roads,
smoking beneath a dying streetlight,
wondering which direction
a man is supposed to take
when both roads promise something
he doesn't believe he deserves.
One road says:
Stay.
The other says:
Run.
I laugh.
Of course they do.
Even the roads have better advice
than the people I've loved.
Perhaps tomorrow
I will take the road towards her.
Perhaps I will disappear
before I reach it.
Not because I don't want love.
God, no.
That's the cruelest part.
I want it.
I want someone's hand
to find mine in the dark
without being asked.
I want a voice
to say my name
as though it belongs somewhere.
I want to stop pretending
that loneliness is a philosophy
and admit that sometimes
it is simply loneliness.
But there are two roads tonight,
and I am standing between them,
slowly becoming smoke,
slowly becoming distance,
slowly becoming the man
who had a path to love
but never quite understood
why the path
didn't seem to have room for him.
So if love comes tomorrow,
tell her not to wait.
I'll probably be nearby,
smiling like an idiot,
pretending I was never hoping
she would find me.