My greatest fear: that I’ll get what I want
and find you’ve had it first.

Your book on the shelf
where mine goes,

a smear of your lipstick
across my husband’s neck,

the yard of my new house
etched with your footprints.

Ten years since I’ve seen you
and I still remember

the sweet hasp of your lips, the sun
in your hair, the brilliance

that swept wherever you’d been
like a wake.

Yours: the voice in my head
that tells me any place I reach

can’t be good enough,
I must keep going—

or you’ll circle the world first
and I’ll have nothing for my own.