Abigail Kirby Conklin

 Yes, and

I’m writing this same

stupid poem again

about how

there’s an alternate universe

in which you love me

the way I want you

to love me and you

are the version of you

I curated in my head

thirty-four seconds after meeting you

and decided that we

would be sharing

a plot in a cemetery

someday, as if we were

some ancient-ass

couple exchanged

by our families

for a goat and an acre

of arable land

500 years ago,

and not the two miserable

half-cocked children

that we are, spinning

through therapy’s revolving

door and waking up

from thirty years’

worth of nightmares, soaked

in the sour sweat

of knowing this time,

no, it won’t

be different.

Abigail Kirby Conklin is an educator and writer currently based in Toronto, Ontario. She is the author of the 2020 chapbook Triage, the Substack "Recently," and a variety of other works found in Tule Review, Sugar House Review, Elevation Review, and Wild Roof Journal. She's online at abigailkirbyconklin.us and @akc_poetry_prints.