Future Song

I dreamt it was 1991. She was still alive. We could still take guitar lessons in the spring, learn how to harmonize like the Indigo Girls. I'd beg her not to go to Texas. We'd drive to Alaska in my Ford Escort, end up working at a resort for minimum wage. Exhausted in the evenings, we'd put down our cigarettes and pluck out teenage dirges. (I wouldn't make fun of her poetry this time). We'd sing Harry Chapin songs and Simon and Garfunkle songs. We'd write goofy songs about a yellow tabby with a million nicknames, songs about rocks we found along rivers in Missouri, songs about the stormy Indiana summer nights, how we ran barefoot in the downpour, the pavement still holding the heat from the day, how we skipped and twirled on the soft, wet grass between the Esplanades, the sky cracking open above us.