so maybe there will be no coming of age.
maybe there will be no moment, signifying glory;
hell, maybe there will be no glory.
maybe we’ll simply be two people who were here and then weren’t.
the gods will not line up moments for us to scavenger hunt our purpose;
maybe we will not have a purpose.
or a god for that matter.
in one moment you’re driving home and you’re singing loud with your best friend;
in another you get mistaken for a man with your helmet on, the bulky death bike and then you get out of a ticket when the policeman sees your face and you come home in giggles.
in another moment you’ve decided to live through another day.
so maybe we will not be anything that aches when it is gone.
maybe we’ll be mundane and chaotic indecision floating in an abyss of our own selves
and maybe you never get to meet that famous 2010 singer you liked as a teenager,
and you never get to learn the fourth language,
or go to that remote country
or kiss the love.
maybe there is no love here.
maybe we will go quietly, with naive hope that is false but you hold on to anyways
because if you do not have this hope to hold on to, there is nothing else.
to hope is to have the courage to pray, against all odds,
to pray that there is someone out there lining up things for you,
lining up lives and people for you to become.
to have hope is to be terrified of all the realities.
we’ll go quietly, unnoticed;
and yes this does not match what we wanted to be,
but there are happy endings in all those poems and stories to make up for all the ones you never get to have in your reality.
A.G.