Here’s a poem about imagining a different life, a life that is potential in yourself, and projecting it onto a relative stranger as the “longed-for someone” .  Alas, so true.

THE INEFFABLE

I’m sitting here reading the paper,

felling warm and satisfied, basically content

with my life and all I have achieved.

Then I go up for a refill and suddenly realize

How much happier I could be with the barista.

Late thirties, hennaed hair, an ankh

or something tattooed on her ankle,

a little silver ring in her nostril.

There’s some mystery surrounding why she’s here,

pouring coffee and toasting bagels at her age.

But there’s a lot of torsion when she walks,

which is interesting.  I can sense right away

how it would all work out between us.

We’d get a loft in the artsy part of town,

and I can see how we’d look shopping together

at our favorite organic market

on a snowy winter Saturday,

snowflakes in our hair,

our arms full of leeks and shiitake mushrooms.

We could do tai chi in the park.

She’d be one of the few people

who actually “gets” my poetry

which I’d read to her in bed.

And I can see us making love, by candlelight,

Struggling to find words for the ineffable.

We never dreamed it could be like this.

An it would all be great, for many months,

until one day, unable to help myself,

I’d say something about that nostril ring.

Like, do you really need to wear that tonight

at Sarah and Mike’s house, Sarah and Mike being

pediatricians who intimidate me slightly

with their patrician cool, and serious money.

And she would give me a look,

a certain lifting of the eyebrows

I can see she’s capable of, and right there

that would be the end of the ineffable.

— George Bilgere