I should have knelt
in the street,
put my head in your lap,
and let you stroke my hair.
But we didn’t know.
We were ten.
Would you have grown
into a woman who found
a cure for what killed you?
Is that why it killed you?
Would we have become
best friends again and again?
If I had known
that a lifetime later
I would still feel what I feel,
I would have knelt in the street,
put my head in your lap,
and let you stroke my hair.