Don't

Something that everybody might have felt at some point in their lives.

***

DON'T.

If you could walk my way to school and then back home;
If you could feel my mother's arms around my shoulders;
If you could sit alone on slippery boulders
And think my thoughts, and watch the water turn to foam
at my bare feet;

If you could bleed
my blood on scorching pavements from my scratched knees
and shed my tears into my sheets and cuddled pillows;
If you could rhyme unbridled words under my willows
and lose the slips of paper to the time (And please,
don't get me wrong -

I still was strong.);
If you woke up in that same bed for ten long years
and touched my floor with my bare feet and shuffled
into my bathroom, washed my fading face and ruffled
my tousled hair into a form, avoiding stares
of my green eyes

aging and wise;
If you could feel my pounding heart and know why
it skips a beat, or drops, or weeps, or stops, or races;
If you had known my friends, my pains, my chases,
If you could hear my voice, my silent cry -

then you could say,

"If I,

      if I were you..."