Rosa,
I loved you before I met you.
How could I not?
You had red hair and you wrote
poems about the end of the world.
You wore mascara to a political meeting
and it looked horrible on you.
I almost laughed.
We spent a night at the prison cell
and you told me about your Russian friend,
and I told you about the Revolutions in
my country, how dreams fall apart in a single night.
After they let us out, you said freedom was an
illusion
and I never saw you again.
I thought you were a lot like me.
But I don't wear my poetry on my sleeve.
You were all that I could have been, in another
time and place.
I was what you would grow up to be, perhaps,
in another lifetime.
In another lifetime, we will die
like star-crossed lovers,
young and beautiful in our graves.
I don't care about this one, I will take
what comes, days and months and years
all in the same beige shade when you look back.
Heaven (if a Heaven there is)
is indeed merciful that it hides the future from us.
When the world ends, Rosa,
(and it will end)
I hope we don't pray, I hope we don't
have anything left to forgive.