Sometimes I Imagine my Unlikely Future with You and Watch it Become my History

It happened one September day

I stole a bag of jellybeans

threaded them onto a necklace

sniffed each flavour … just for fun.

My counsellor said if you were a jellybean, what flavour

would you be?

I thought of daisies, buttercups, bluebells, borage—a wildflower garden

in your irises

hues like jellybeans blending bending to your will—

Me! I replied me flavour.

Because it's me you devour when I dream.

I recalled some sorry guy who rambled on about his life of tattered threads

until dawn.

He never called.

They never did.

I recalled how I fidgeted and pulled my too-short skirt to hide

my too-short legs

in that corner spot at every party

in the draughty seat at every bar

where I feigned nonchalance,

minted laughter from biology,

forged goblets from silver candy wrappers,

watched you and others

talk

laugh

swap ice-cubes … mouth to mouth

melt into each other, … a body of bodies. Rainbows

formed from my neon sun-head and damned tears.

My future is my history

already lived … when I tasted those jellybeans

lolled them around my tongue

let them tingle

where I wanted you.

What happens now?

When you meddle with time

you mess with memory.

I wanted to remember having you, having us wrapped

in salty blankets,

warbling songs from 80s, 90s,

sharing sticky jellybeans.

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