There are a hundred and one ways this could end up,
The majority probably disastrous.
It is a tangled mass of possibilities,
All tied to this upcoming encounter.
A lot of time has elapsed
Since the last confrontation
And the bitter aftertaste of your half-hearted apology
Still stains the air I breathe.
It is a Schrodinger’s Cat situation,
But with hundreds of outcomes superposed upon each other
Until all hope is obliterated by this dam that I have encountered.
I am Schrodinger’s Cat,
Hovering in a state between life and death.
Am I alive? Or did I die? It is impossible to tell.
But if I rip myself open to inspect my quivering heart,
I will surely die, for some things are better left unspoken.
I abandon emotion and appeal to logic.
A tree diagram, a bipartite graph, a Poisson distribution
Are my allies in this war, this struggle
To account for every eventuality and calculate the maximum weight.
The branches are too close together, though,
And entirely indiscernible.
Like parasitic misteltoe, they coil and seduce,
Offering a possibility while laughingly plotting to suffocate.
Do I go for the hug? Do I smile?
Do I treat you like an old friend,
Or pretend we’ve never met?
Should I be conservative, and rein myself in?
Or become a caricature of myself,
Flirt with your friends and drown you out?
The numbers blur,
And Poisson turns to poison.
I visualize it as a game of tennis.
I cannot recall if you were fond of tennis or not.
The ball taunts me from my court, stifling me.
I do not know what to do with it and how to hide it.
I close my eyes, and close my fingers around it.
Then, fast as I can, lob it over the net.
Your responsibility. You deal with it.
Your serve. I’ll return whatever you throw at me.
The ball is, as they say, in your court.
