In your version,
  we were indoor
  ice fishing, side
  by side, smiling,
  your lips tinged
  with spice from
  my weeks-old
  kisses, and I know
  we felt impossible.
  You wished us
  younger, wished
  us different hours.
  I’d lifted you overhead
  in your version, spun
  you weightless
  on ice encircled
  by dark pines painted,
  and you were happy,
  hence you took us ice
  fishing, and maybe
  that’s where the end
  was for you, trying out
  poles and nets in a
  small hut inside
  an indoor rink, just us,
  breathmist, catfish,
  the quieting down,
  the let-go of weeks
  dreamed up between us
  who never kissed
  with actual lips.
  But in my version
  I fished us a ball
  of light. I fished us
  a rocketship, shot us
  through ceiling,
  over trees, to
  outer space, beyond
  words hushed. I set us
  in a dome of light.
  I set us in a capsule
  in the sky, said
  here we live now,
  and we left us there,
  those other selves,
  shimmering. Braver
  poets we were then,
  before this dying,
  slow and slate-gray,
  we silence through alone
  in cars—tell me
  you don’t believe that
  dreamed-up day
  was the best of life.