All Tomorrow's Partings

All Tomorrow’s Partings

Many, many years from here; who knows when:

we’ll meet. Maybe coffee in a Costa,

bean counting, awkward grinning across rims

like mugs. Drunk and punched by a past we've lost.

We will, I’m sure, refuse the offered cake.

Talk much about nothing for half an hour

or so, snipping each other’s phrases; words

bitten in accidental halves by nerves.

Disputing the bill will make our hearts ache,
who wants to be in debt to the other?

Fumbling for coins that change like false lovers.

Then leave. Forever, I think. Love's last showers.

Count your brief moments and lust in love’s luck:

Your futures lie like dregs in coffee cups.