Life I Haven't Lived

My coworker came back with photographs.

I looked at them during lunch

while pretending to eat a sandwich.

Tiles on building facades.

Narrow streets that turned corners

I invented in my head.

Light hitting the water

in a way that I'd already dreamed.

I've been to Portugal a thousand times.

In my head, I know where I'd sit for coffee.

I know which street I'd get lost on.

I know the sound of the language

would feel like coming home.

But I haven't.

I'm sitting in an office break room

eating someone else's story,

and it tastes like something I'm never going to have.

There's a version of me that lives there.

That version is thin now.

That version is fading.

Every time someone comes back with real photographs,

I watch that imagined life

get smaller and smaller.

It's not the place I'm grieving.

It's the person I could have been

if I'd gone.