gray0328

Coffee With My Younger Self

 

I arrived first at the café,

claiming a table by the window,

watching for that familiar slouch,

that hair I once thought stylish.

 

He enters, scanning nervously about,

not yet comfortable in his skin,

the way I somehow learned to be,

after decades of necessary practice.

 

We order the same black coffee,

but he adds three sugar packets,

a sweetness I\'ve since abandoned

for the bitter truth of things.

 

His eyes widen at my gray hair,

my comfortable shoes, reading glasses,

while I study his unmarked face,

the unweathered map of possibilities.

 

I want to warn him about Susan,

about taking that teaching job,

about wasting years chasing approval,

about his father\'s final summer.

 

Instead I ask about his poems,

and listen as he explains them,

with a passion I had forgotten,

with the certainty I\'ve since lost.