insomnia postcard: you and i and later

i sometimes wonder who will be there when i've grown ancient

who will be alive then, what others will have accumulated

which faces will have come and gone or left and reappeared-- 

returned because they forgot their jacket,

then stayed another decade

i hoped it would be you, this time

that on a bleached-out park bench among squirrels doing calisthenics 

we'll take seats on opposite ends with notebooks and the dailies 

or a bag of stale crushed donuts 

to toss out to the birds

maybe we'll read quietly, or mine raisin-brains for survivors
then ink them down silently with arthritic, knobby fingers

maybe we'll abandon books for chatter about faces going by

and all the time gone by

and how it does get easier,

it seems, 

for people to say good-bye

and do it all while passing a flask of whiskey back and forth

as if we were firm-breasted and unlined, 

anything but shrunken aunties grinning through tea-stained teeth

i hope you'll have wide streaks of grey that run from temple to neck,

wear bright red lipsticks thick as paint that bleed just at the edges

i hope i still wear too much black and have by then adopted

a habit of wearing hats with oversized broaches stabbed into the rim

it happened then. remember?

i do. or don't. 

you do.

and there was that other time--

just pass the flask you hag…