Future History
She asked me once
what the future looked like
when I was young.
I pointed around the room.
She laughed.
She was born in 2045,
Never knew a world That wasn't already online.
Never watched tomorrow Arrive piece by piece,
Never thought a machine that talked Was strange in the least.
I remember when all this
Was something people feared.
She looks around and says— “What was weird about here?”
Different century?
No.
Different memory.
What I watched arrive,
She found waiting at the door.
Everything I called tomorrow—
She calls before. She was born in 2045,
Calls my future history,
Things that changed the world I knew Are ordinary things to see.
I tell her how tomorrow looked Before tomorrow came to be.
She smiles like I'm describing Rome— She calls my future history.
I told her people used to drive.
She thought I meant for fun.
Told her phones had little screens You carried one by one.
Passwords. Plastic cards. Waiting weeks for things.
She looked at me the way I'd look At someone explaining kings.
Then she told me what her future Might eventually become.
And suddenly— I was the primitive one.
She was born in 2045!
Tomorrow was her yesterday.
Everything that shocked my world
Was waiting when she came.
But when she talks about what's next,
I finally understand— The future always sounds impossible UNTIL YOU'RE STANDING WHERE
IT LANDS.
I remember firsts. She remembers none.
She knows the finished world— I watched the thing become.
I tell her where we've been.
She tells me what she sees.
Somewhere between those two— WE MEET IN 2070.
She asked:
“Do you miss the old world?”
Sometimes.
Then I asked:
“You scared of the next one?”
She smiled.
“Were you?” Fair point.
SHE WAS BORN IN 2045!
Calls my miracles antiques!
Calls the future I imagined Something everybody sees!
But when that piano starts,
We don't need technology— Same twelve notes survived us both,
FROM MY TOMORROW TO HER MEMORY!
She calls my future history.
And one day...
Somebody will call hers
history too.