Across the Street from the Station

You were the one I passed every day across the street from the station and never spoke to. You were the one my thoughts left last when falling asleep at night and first to rush to when I awoke. You were the one I addressed my poems to, the clumsy lines of a youth spilling out on a page and quickly thrown away. I could never think of what to say. Five days a week for three months my life centered on the precious seconds it took to pass you in the street. Then one day you were gone. I never saw you again. It's silly that sometimes I still think of you and can't even give you a name. You will never know that I have carried your memory through the tangled scribblings of my life and arrived here with your lovely face unchanged, mine, furrowed and gray, an old man, a lifetime late but now with something to say.