Unlived Interlude
You ever miss a place
you've never been?
I do.
All the time.
There was a house somewhere
I almost remember.
Kitchen light on,
Late November.
Two coats by the doorway,
Coffee going cold,
Someone in the next room
I thought I'd grow old with.
Funny— I can almost see it.
I know which window faced the street.
That house never existed.
Sometimes I miss
the life that never happened.
Like somebody took a memory
before I got to have it.
Nothing there to photograph.
Nothing I can hold.
Still, sometimes I miss it
like something I fucking lost.
There was another version
who figured money out,
Had the right career,
Knew what forty was about.
Called his friends on Sundays.
Bought the place he wanted.
Probably complained about it—
Like everybody does. I wonder if he was happy.
That's the stupid part.
I spent years jealous of a man
who only lived inside my head.
Sometimes I miss
the life that never happened.
People I never met.
Rooms I never had.
Years that never came
still somehow feel like
years gone past.
How the hell do you lose
something you never had?
Maybe somewhere
there's a photograph— Me at that table.
Her beside me. Keys to that house.
Some dumb dog asleep underneath.
Everybody older. Everybody okay.
No. There isn't.
That's the trick with imagined lives—
Nothing bad gets remembered.
No bills on the counter.
No slammed doors in December.
No nights lying awake
wondering if you chose wrong.
The life that never happened
never had to survive being lived.
Oh.
Maybe that's why it looked so good.
Sometimes I miss the life that never happened.
I think I always will.
Not because it would've been better.
Just because... for a while,
I thought it would be mine.
But I can't keep mourning someone else's memories.
That man never lost his future.
He never had one.
Neither did I.
I had this one.
I just wasn't looking at it.