The Time Traveler’s Lament

I see an old woman sitting in a hospital bed
her glasses are bent and well-used
her teeth are yellow like the pages of an old comic book
but her eyes are still full of amber light

I remember the first time I saw her in
a dive bar in a Brooklyn back alley sitting at a cigarette-scarred table,
Whiskey-colored light winks from a single bulb above her head

But that fades away,
Nitrate film ignites.

I see a young woman, plexiglass strong,
the barstool beneath her creaks in sympathy as she waits for me.
But I’m not there yet.
Instead, she waits for her next conquest, the jester of the bar

I remember a teenage girl giggling about the boy next door,
He doesn’t like me with my skinned knees and tangled hair
But you don’t know that every Saturday morning
His mother wipes the dew off his bone-cold brow
And implodes slivers of dream filled by your crackling smile

But that dissolves,
Sugar cubes in the teacup

I see a girl playing with headless Barbies
you can imagine better heads than dead plastic smiles
heads with large fronds like a prehistoric palm tree
the leaves pockmarked by the teeth of the long necked dinosaurs living below

I remember a tombstone with your name inscribed.
My bones ache with the weight of memory.
My eyes dim with the light of you.
My skin creases, a pale imitation of your smile.

But that implodes,
Paper crumbling in a toddler’s hand.

Our days seem so far off.

I remember standing in the middle of an abyss,
While you stand on both edges, looking into the center.
Our eyes never meet, but I see you.

Heat, power, you rush toward me from both sides.

Our days are here.
Finally.