In a moment, a moment was shared,
and we smiled, and laughed, and then,
when it ended, we said our goodbyes,
and walked back to our separate lives.

We were bigger somehow, grander
for that short, beloved intrusion.
In the breadth of a moment, millions
of possibilities sparked and vanished.

In another story, we remained there,
at that too-tall coffee table, and spoke
into the small hours, set the world right,
and left even greater.

Another thread, we met again, again,
and then the third time we discovered
that, truly, we hated each other.
Shrinking back to reality.

Or another, we got on a bus,
and went to Brighton, where ghosts
play at being stories. There, we
met a cat called Phillip.

Elsewhere, that coffee was cancelled
in the pouring rain, and on my ride home,
I crashed, and all my threads came loose
in the ditch of a forest trail.

Maybe I met your husband, and there
he told me that I was his destiny.
We lived happily together for years,
in the thatched cottage you made.

Or perhaps all those threads, those stories,
each infinitely complex, was precisely the same.
You would return on the late bus,
and I’d write poems in the rain.