receiver to send

Listen, think

it through before you read this poem all the way
to the end. Are you sure you're not better without
- even now, knowing
as I type these words; years, days or ages later

if anything survives, you may guess or know
(depending how much survives), (I guess something
must have. For you to be here with me at all,
but) I may be dead. If I am, I hope you know

I didn't go into this loving you. I know we don't
know each other. If you did, you'd know it violates
my entire grasp of love, which needs trust, so much,
which entirely comes to rest in knowing. Without

which - how can you trust someone? Who are you so
trusting them to be? Anyone at all, so long ago?

Surely not me

which doesn't matter,
But it was just...the thought, the point, a
realization

that I could be so far in the past right now

that everyone I love may be dead, and what could
have happened? And

it made me feel sick at the loss, and so grateful

for you. At least, even if I never know who you
are, you read this far. So we're stuck with each