the last one, this one, & the next

we met the first time on a warm, overcast day. i’d come to learn this is your favorite weather forecast every time. under the pulse of the beating clouds on the other side of the world, we began as enemies. two little boys tending to their runaway sheep, maintaining a half-century-long feud between our grandfathers’ fathers. we never touched in that life. our lips, our hands, our thumbprints never pressed. sometimes we shot our rifles in each other’s general direction at night so as to say “a thought of you is being held.” we never fist fought in the schoolhouse, merely spat at each other’s feet hoping that by stomping on the saliva it would bring us closer. we have always been at war. all’s fair when the love is the war. we hated the same tuft of grass that separated our homes. hated the blood in each other’s veins. hated the hate we were forced to clutch like spades. i loathe to call it unfinished, as we were unbegun. this business of rivalry, of genetics, of famine. our lives were so empty, so vacant, fueled only by the drive to harm the other in every sadistic way we could conjure without ever so much as breaking the other’s toe. we were bound to meet in the next. the next being this. where we met on a cold but bright sunny day. unfortunately i had yet to recognize your face, so i let myself freeze in your wait, anticipating your arrival. but your smile unleashed a familiar warmth, a grotesque gravitational pull, & i found the diet coke you clenched as we walked an endearing comfort rather than a grenade. i saw your disappearances as fantastical performances & your reappearance as divine. at first you were patient, kind, gentle. then you were honest & pulled me from the pedestal. i missed the moment when honesty became cruelty, it flew right over my head. i was locked into you, like a key snapped in two. no amount of suffocation, no amount of intimidation, could shake me from your hold. the twisting tunnels, the spiral flips, the sudden heart-stopping drops. you called loving me your challenge, then set me in a maze. a life together, a life apart, we cannot keep them both. i’ll see you in the next one, this i absolutely know. next time you’re the woman, next time i’m the man. we’ll meet under summer showers & finally make a plan. we’ll carry the lessons we learned from one & two so proud. i’ll be less fearful, less selfish, less loud. you will learn to listen, to shoot your rifle at the sun. you will learn forgiveness & how to stay, not run. i’ll meet you in the orchard, or maybe in the streets. the drought will end when we meet again, whether forest or concrete. we will grow in sunshine, in rain, in snow, overcast. the next life is ours, i swear, not this one or the last.