A Dream On Christmas Eve

A poem about an alternate reality concerning a former love interest that wasn't interested.

(For Karma)

Your birthday

and me,

standing in your

driveway

outside your house

(or what passes 

for your house)

contemplating

a knock on the door

when I see you

up the street

walking with friends;

deja vu

of so long ago.

But different.

You do not go

out of your way

to greet me

as back then,

but to mock me.

Contemplation

complete, I

turn to go.

Only to return.

And to find sitting

on the side of a bed

in your front yard,

my mother

making you the

elaborate card

she would never make.

"It's her birthday,"

she says.

"Don't you want to--"

I shush her,

not wanting you to hear,

not wanting you to know

we're just outside 

your sphere

of existence.

Why?

Because I can't escape a

past feeling,

or how all of this

is vaguely all too familiar somehow

but painfully different,

inverted, an inverted

symbolism of perversion:

you,

the friends,

the card,

my mother's now 

acceptance of you and,

most perverted of all,

my now acceptance

of you not.

To my mother's 

now surprise

(that wouldn't

in a million years

have been back then)

I finally contemplate "no"

and turn to go,

deciding that it just

wouldn't be worth it,

after all.

And for that,

this is sad.

For that,

I'm truly sorry.