May We Never Meet Again

I hope I never see your face
ever again
in this lifetime.

I hope I am spared
the quiet cruelty
of watching time
rewrite your features
softening what I once knew,
or hardening what I once left behind.

I hope I never learn
who you’ve become,
where life has carried you,
or how gently or harshly
the years have held you.

I hope your existence
fades into a distant, unreachable place
not because it means nothing,
but because it means too much
to face.

Because if I ever stand before you again,
I know I won’t just see
the passing of time

I will see the scar
the one I carved
with careful certainty,
disguised as the right choice.

And I am too much of a coward
to witness what I’ve done
to measure the weight
of what I let go.

So as long as we both breathe
under the same sky,
let distance be kind to us.

Let our paths remain strangers to each other.
Let chance forget our names.
Let even coincidence
lose its way.

May we never meet again
not even as passing shadows
in a crowded world.