The future uncertain

Again we were passengers
on their train,
but this time in the company of friends.
For once the ride was ours,
and we did not pay.

You asked for a paint marker
and I wondered what you would write,
how the walls would receive your poetry,
how the streets would greet our unruliness,
and whether we would last through the weekend.
We parted ways,
it's been months.

It was fleeting,
this opportunity to celebrate,
link arms and hold hands,
share cigarettes and conversations,
and kisses and stolen embraces.
All of it passing,
and we scarcely began --
we never quite shook the cops,
and you did not grasp.
I did not let go.

But goodbye to the city,
and farewell to each other:
we must return to our worlds,
separately, like bandits on the lam,
sworn to silence.

Tomorrow I will smoke on a back porch by myself,
and despite the urge,
I will not bother to call,
because I have already whispered into your ear
of a future that may not come,
of a forbidden innocence too easily
lost among the noisy routines and confusions that we survive,
and don't particularly like --
still you were reserved,
and you were not touched.

Already, I can tell
we will have tasted fresh air
a moment before suffocating,
And it was too stale,
your lungs were not ready,
so our wildflower will have bloomed in late fall,
without apology.

But I will not forget or forgive,
I must wear my broken heart proudly,
like these skinny black pants and weatherbeaten shoes.
And I will not feign indifference --
not in this world --
when rare beauty disappears without notice,
and I am,
rather, we become,
nothing more than quiet echo and memory.
And the future uncertain.