'Hello, future,' I say.

                                   'Just say, "Hello, future."'

                                   We don’t stop, but you wave

                                   to the camera and sing,

                                   'Hey, future!' in that way

                                   you sing 'Merry Christmas!'

                                   or 'Hey, you!' if it’s me

                                   when you open the door.

                                   I imagined that day

                                   we would watch this, after

                                   everything we could be

                                   had already happened.

                                   We’d look at each other

                                   in a comfortable room

                                   at the quieter end

                                   of our well-traveled life

                                   and reassure ourselves

                                   by telling your fortune—

                                   that everything to come

                                   would be worth all the rest

                                   of everything to come.

                                   It wasn’t innocent,

                                   asking you to mark this

                                   point from which we’d measure

                                   whatever time was left.

                                   I knew it might be sad

                                   for at least one of us

                                   to watch someday—sometimes

                                   I watch it on behalf

                                   of the future we planned,

                                   sometimes one we might have

                                   escaped. What if I had

                                   stopped you there to confess

                                   my fear—that we’d never

                                   be happier? We could

                                   have parted on that bridge

                                   and never said a thing

                                   we never should have said.

                                   But as long as we live

                                   in this future you greet,

                                   there might be so much more

                                   to say—when we’re ready

                                   no longer to be two

                                   idiots on a bridge,

                                   assuming it will hold.