Tomorrow

I wonder what it would be like to have a look into the future and see where I’d be. To know the people who left me and the people who stayed. To know whether I’d have a pixie cut or hair long enough to braid. Whether I’d still be in touch with those who made me happy, I wonder if they’d still make me happy then. Whether I’d start speaking to everyone who I lost again, whether I’d be shy like I’d always been or a little too outspoken. I wonder whether I’d finally write all those poems I left unwritten.
I wonder about the house I’d live in. Whether it would have flowers that creep up whitewashed walls, or paint that curls and unfurls itself like a mouth to speak of the times these walls fell weak to the shouts of a house that would never come to be a home. Whether the shelves would have books on them or forgotten crumbs and half empty bottles of rum. I wonder when I walk through that door would I inhale wild rose fumes from candles I burnt too long in rooms I didn’t really want to step into. Or whether I’d exhale cigarette smoke with a little bit of burning hope trying to figure what it really is to be alive, trying to figure out if my life was more than just the photographs saved on my hard drive.
I wonder if I’d still like holding hands as much as I do now, it lets me believe that no matter how short life seems, there’s always something you can grab on to. I pray that every touch of every leaf and every bird and every curve remains embedded in the soles of my shoes if I ever tend to lose my memory I want to know that I’d still have a story to fall back to. I wonder if I’d live in New York City, a place that would stay up with me on nights I can’t force myself to shut my eyes, or in a place so quiet that the chaos in my mind would ring louder than the few syllables of life that I’d manage to find.
I want to believe that the tide of hope I’m sailing on, won’t rise high enough to collapse with the break of another dawn, I want to believe that I won’t collapse along with it. I wonder if I’ll ever touch the corners of the world enough to know exactly how big dreams can be, to memorize the way the sun melts into the sea, to prove the people who say our hearts are the size of a fist wrong, they are entire god damn homes where people belong, where people come from.
I want so much of the future, I wonder sometimes if fortune tellers can see the lines in my palm bounce off my hand and into the cracks on the ground to know exactly twenty years from now where the heels of my boots will be found. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to discover a time machine behind a screen in an attic. To click a big red button that clearly says “no” and to know of all the secrets the future holds between its fingers. But – now that I think of it, maybe I want time to linger just a little longer. Perhaps right now, right here, is brighter than tomorrow, because maybe when we think we’re waking up from a nightmare, we’ll wake up into one.