What Might Have Been
It collapsed
Like a seismic shift
Once a city
Now a verdant drift
Like so many before
A city replaced with a stain
Tinged violaceous
Virid remains
A figure looks back
With regret but no pity
Rolls through the door
Try again with a new city
Stalking away from her building, caught in my feelings
With incoherent thought my rage is brought to the ceiling
My memory distorts our dealings to put her in the wrong
I’m too strong to…….. wait a minute, that doesn’t belong!
Wasn’t John’s butcher shop at the corner of 13th and 2nd?
I reckon it was yet now a strange flower shop beckons
With intoxicating selections covered in pearls of dew
Strange, the whole store seems to have a purplish hue
John’s place should be here, this seems doubly shady
A call from the counter, “See anything for your lovely lady?”
The skinny man with glasses gestures to what he sells
Only my love’s two favourite flowers; violets and irish bells
I dwell for a moment, not ready to end my fight
Despite not being right I don’t want to crawl, all contrite
I lock eyes with the flower man and gaze on his visage
Peculiar, the man is practically my exact mirror image
Interrupting my internal debate, words from my virtual twin
“Don’t wait until too late, then wonder what might have been”
Nothing seems real, that shop was never there before
A doppelganger of me running a vaguely purple store
I’m out the door, through green and purple streets I race
Flowers in hand to apologise, back to my love’s place
Her home is empty and there’s a note stuck on the door
Our last fight was one too many, the proverbial final straw
I slump in defeat, barely notice the city melting all around
Collapsing buildings, puddles of purple-green paint abound
Out of the corner of my eye, the flowerman looking gruff
Shaking his head sadly, you weren’t quite quick enough
Look in my love’s mirror, this must be an absurd dream
Like this whole city, I seem to be made of purple and green
And my facial features literally start to melt off my head
It’s horrifying, body liquefying, I wish I’d said… said……..
A figure looks back
With regret but no pity
Rolls through the door
Try again with a new city
Desperately trying
To repaint history
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