If I could go back in time I’d shake hands with Einstein
and thank him for his theory of relativity, which brought me to you,
and greet all the dinosaurs one by one, ride on the back of a t-rex
just to feel the wind in my hair, but nothing could compare to the fear
of losing you, so I’d meet your parents, sit down to dinner with them,
and tell your mom all about how your clothes look so good
on my bedroom floor that they were probably made
expressly for my favorite carpet.
My heartbeat is nothing if not matched to yours; thank god
someone invented the sine wave to put two and two together,
otherwise your heart would be a cosine function
and mine would be tangent, and our paths would rarely cross.
You know, if I could go back to the exact instant you were born,
I’d hold your plump little hand and look into those big brown eyes
just to see if every shooting star I kissed into your mouth
twenty years from then would show up in their twin reflections.
I’d place you gently down into the plastic blue cradle
and say, you remind me of you.
I know you’d warn me about ruining something when I go back
in the time machine, about somehow creating a ripple effect
just by touching a stranger on the shoulder, something
that would change it so that we’d never lay eyes on one another,
but just remember that even your desire is something tangible,
like a lighter flame, and I have carried it in heavy bowls
day after day, without spilling a single drop.