‘Every Life I Lived, I Knew You’

Had I a lens to see each life I ever lived,
I would be certain that I knew you in all of them.
In some you’d be a childhood friend,
A clear picture from a town whose streets I could recall no longer,
Their image a casualty of time’s quiet attrition.
In some you’d be a neighbour,
Your disposition swelling with a warmth to bring great gardens to bloom when Winter’s heart beats loudest.
In some you’d be an old friend,
One whose memory braced against life’s angry maelstrom, beaming in the chaos of my mind’s eye.

Were it that I could pull back the curtain on each life I ever lived,
I would hope that our hearts converged in most of them,
That the trajectory of our being would lead us to earnest promises, a place to call home,
An embrace so deep it could defy the cloying hands of time, the violence of circumstance.

And if our paths should ever diverge,
In those lives where I was lucky enough to hold you close,
I would wish our destinations to be the same at the terminus of things,
Joining hands again at the end of a turbulent pathway.

Every life I lived, I knew you,
And I know I loved you in most.