on the most random streets

We can keep talking like this,
without saying what we mean.
There are dead ends everywhere
on the most random streets.
We both know.

Someday, somewhere,
I’ll be looking out the window
of somebody else’s car
on a rainy night in July,
and I won’t know you’re gone yet.

There won’t be a fox wandering the grass in August
while we drink too much on the front porch,
music playing from your truck,
or icicles falling from the gutters onto the snow.

We won’t take the canoe out
onto Lake Champlain in October,
where the leaves can’t land
or look at each other the way
we did all of March,
even when nothing
was happening anymore.

Your hand won’t touch my back,
and we won’t watch the clock
for June, waiting
to spray each other with sun lotion again.

We’ll be two missed phone calls
at different times—
one from me, one from you,
too many years from now
on a Saturday night in the middle of dinner.
No voicemail.
No number listed to call back.

© 2026 Casey Murphy. All rights reserved.

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