Not unromantic

The other day you reminded me that

we could each perfectly plausibly be

married to someone else (to any one

of fifty, sixty million someone

elses), that our paths might never have crossed,

if your parents had chosen a different

plot to build their house on 10 years before

I first laid eyes on you, or if we’d met

when one of us was otherwise engaged,

or if we’d started something but then walked

away (as we so nearly did), or if

one of us had died, or if any of

several billion entirely random

things had or hadn’t happened, and I

felt a little hurt, and thought that’s

unromantic.

But then I thought,

maybe that’s what romantic really is;

embracing the arbitrary; honouring

the mainly circumstantial; paying

reverence to pure chance.

Choosing to live your life

as if you’d met

The One.