building homes in 'perhaps'

[sundayschild]

i like you, i might say, and perhaps --
if i was wearing red, and the petals of
that flower in your lapel numbered three
or eight or even eleven -- and the game
we are playing wasn't fifty-two
card pick up, or solitaire --
you might say, i like you too, and then
we might look at each other and say, oh!

and perhaps, if time passed, and your smile
still set my sky on fire, and my laughter
still made you shake down to your bones
(if it ever did; this is all
speculation, you understand), we would kiss -- once, and then again, and then again, until
my body stretched out alongside yours,
and i grew taller for the reaching

hindsight affords me a clarity that the
present-tense disallows: if i said this, or
mumbled that; held your gaze here and dropped
it there (restless, it rests less
on the ground beside my feet than it would -- elsewhere), perhaps --

well.