When You Are Someone Else

When you are someone else perhaps we'll meet.

Some years from now, somebody with a face

like yours, but older, in some public place,

an airport maybe, or a city street,

will see someone resembling me. They'll greet

each other, knowing long ago, somewhere,

in other bodies, they had chanced to share

a momentary glow, a mortal heat.

I do not want to spend my lives with you,

nor can you speak for those whom you'll become.

The people who succeed us must be free

to choose the ones they love, the way that we

for now have chosen one another. Come,

before tomorrow makes me someone new.