The Old Friend

I have missed you and our time together,
and I want you to know that I am sorry
our paths took us in different directions
and never really left a moment for us
to consider how that happened anyway.
I wish life and old promises had
a reset button, I’d push that button
until my thumbs bled, if only for the chance
to tell you that I have always wanted you
to be happy and ever so loved,
even though I believed you were wasting
your life and your love on someone
who would never prove himself worthy
enough to deserve it, not to me anyway.
And if I’m being honest, probably not
to anyone who has know your heart
and loved your soul.
You see, my friend, two things can
be true at one time, and sometimes
those two things will contradict each other,
but what is light without a little darkness?
I love you and I think of you often,
and I hope one day you and I will run
into each other again, in another season
of these very lives, somewhere in a park
on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
You’ll smile and smell like you always have,
and we’ll share the best hug
before we introduce our grandchildren
to each other, and when they walk off
hand-in-hand to play on the swings,
you and I will share that look again,
and we’ll both have a lesson to teach
our grandchildren later that night,
how life always has a funny way
of coming back around and bringing sunshine
to hearts that have been cold for too long.

Nicole Lyons 2018