Between Eleven & Twelve
You came in like something already written,
like I’d missed the first few pages somehow.
Everywhere I looked, the numbers followed,
eleven here, twelve there,
like the universe was laughing out loud.
You knew the things I didn’t have to explain.
I knew the look before you said my name.
For a little while,
everything ordinary felt like evidence.
And I believed it.
Maybe that was the danger— how easy you were to recognize.
I stopped asking if it was real
because it felt too strange to be a lie.
There’s a space between eleven and twelve where I still find you.
Not quite gone, not quite mine,
just close enough to confuse.
You’re in the places we never went,
the plans we never got to choose.
And I keep mistaking
coincidence for conversation with you.
There’s a space between eleven and twelve.
I lived there for a while.
You told me things that sounded like forever
without ever
using that word.
And maybe I filled in all the silence
with the version of us
I thought I’d heard.
There was Amsterdam in some other life,
your hand reaching back for mine.
A boy beside us,
a city waking, everything finally aligned.
But futures are easy when they’re imaginary.
Nobody has to stay.
You were warm enough to make me trust the fire.
Then
distant enough
to make me question
whether I invented the entire thing.
There’s a space between eleven and twelve where I still find you.
Not quite gone, not quite mine,
just close enough to confuse.
You’re in the songs and passing cars,
the numbers I wish I could refuse.
And I keep mistaking coincidence for conversation with you.
There’s a space between eleven and twelve.
I lived there for a while.
You watch me sometimes from a distance.
Half a presence.
Half a goodbye.
And I hate how little things can keep
a whole impossible hope alive.
One view.
One word.
One answer the next day.
Just enough oxygen for a fire that should have died anyway.
And maybe you don’t mean anything by it.
Maybe that’s the hardest part.
You can touch somebody’s life without ever knowing which pieces of them
you start. I wanted you to come back certain.
Not lonely. Not curious.
Not halfway.
I wanted the kind of love
that crosses the room instead of watching from the doorway.
I wanted you to say: I was scared.
I was wrong. I love you.
Come with me. I wanted the universe to stop sending symbols
and send me you.
But it didn’t.
You didn’t.
And eventually
those have to mean the same thing.
So there’s a space between
eleven and twelve where I used to wait for you.
Where every strange coincidence
felt like something love would do.
But numbers cannot hold me.
And signs cannot choose.
And I can’t keep calling it destiny when destiny keeps asking me
to lose. There’s a space between eleven and twelve.
I know it by heart.
But I don’t live there anymore.
If you ever come back,
come back all the way.
No signs.
No numbers. No almost.
Just say my name.