“In the Next Life”

another poem by Jeff DeMarco

Sometimes I still think of it
when the room is almost dark
your breathing beside me,
my name somewhere beneath your heart.
I used to think that love was proof,
something you could hold and keep.
Now I know it leaves no footprints
when it slips out in its sleep.
And maybe I was made for this:
to watch the good things go,
to forever find the little faults in me
that everyone else always knows.
So I stayed-
Not because I didn’t know,
and not because it didn’t hurt.
Maybe I only needed one more reason
to believe what I felt at first.
That some people are meant to be held
and some are meant to lose.
Some are given second chances.
Some are easier to use.
Maybe that’s what the dark is for,
to give old ghosts a place to stay,
to let the things we couldn’t keep
take softer shapes and drift away.
Maybe I was only passing through,
or maybe you were passing too.
Maybe the distance was the point,
or maybe I just never knew.
Perhaps some roads are meant to bend
before they ever learn the way.
Maybe some hands are meant to part
before they learn what makes them stay.
Maybe in the next life,
I’ll learn to love myself anyway.