Almost

Published by

Bob Lynn

07/12/2025

| Reading time:

1–2 minutes

We met in the wrong season –
you, still untangling yourself from another life,
me, half-packed for a city I’d promised myself to.
The timing arrived like a letter addressed wrong,
slipped beneath the door of people
we were no longer becoming.

I knew it in the way your laugh
landed in my chest and stayed there.
How your hand, brushing mine for the car keys,
became an entire conversation
neither of us knew how to begin.

But recognition isn’t permission.
And wanting isn’t having.

Some nights I wonder about the parallel world
where we arrived at each other unencumbered –
no half-finished chapters,
no tickets already booked,
no promises made to other versions of ourselves.

Would we have been gentler then?
Or was it precisely the impossibility
that made us pay attention,
that turned ordinary moments
into things we’d later hoard like photographs?

Perhaps we were always
the museum behind glass –
beautiful, untouchable,
preserved in the amber of almost.

I think I believe this:
that right people don’t wait for right times.
They build them, or break them, or damn the cost.
What we had was something else –
exquisite and insufficient,
a theory of love never tested by the mess of living it.

Still, on certain afternoons when light falls
the way it did that autumn,
I taste the shape of what we didn’t choose,
and it’s both relief and grief,
both doors closing and opening,
both the lesson and the loss.

Tags: Almost, Bittersweet, Timing

7 responses to “Almost”

Anna Waldherr

07/12/2025

I tend to agree that right people don’t wait for right times. If it doesn’t happen, it’s a fantasy and nothing more. Lifetimes have been wasted on such fantasies.

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1. Bob Lynn
  
  07/12/2025
  
  Anna, thank you for sharing such a forthright perspective. You’ve touched on something the poem confronts – that tension between what we tell ourselves about circumstance and what might simply be hesitation dressed up as fate.
  
  I take your point about fantasy. There’s undeniable truth in the idea that genuine commitment finds a way, that people willing to truly choose each other don’t let calendars or geography write the final word. Perhaps what we call “wrong timing” is sometimes just another name for insufficient courage, or incompatible priorities we’re reluctant to admit.
  
  Yet I wonder if there’s space between fantasy and cynicism for something more nuanced. Not every connection that fails to materialise represents a lifetime wasted – sometimes it’s a catalyst, a mirror, or simply a moment of recognition that teaches us what we’re capable of feeling. The poem doesn’t argue for waiting indefinitely or nursing impossible hopes. Rather, it examines how we hold both truths simultaneously: that timing can genuinely matter (grief, transitions, existing commitments that deserve honour), and that when love is substantial enough, people do indeed “build, or break, or damn the cost.”
  
  Your comment challenges romantic passivity, which I deeply respect. The question isn’t whether to wait for perfect alignment, but whether we’re honest about what we’re actually choosing – and what we’re calling it.
  
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Barnadhya Rwitam

07/12/2025

Nicely written, loved reading it, Bob!

I scribble about life and people, and occasionally attempt poetry. Do check out my blog and subscribe if you like it.

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1. Bob Lynn
  
  07/12/2025
  
  Thank you so much, Barnadhya – I’m delighted the poem connected with you. There’s something particularly gratifying when a piece about the complexities of connection and timing finds its way to someone who writes about life and people themselves. Those are the territories that never exhaust themselves, aren’t they? The human landscape with all its contradictions and tender impossibilities.
  
  I’ve added your blog to my reading list and shall genuinely enjoy exploring your pieces. There’s a special pleasure in discovering fellow writers who attempt poetry “occasionally” – often those attempts carry the most honesty, unencumbered by the weight of always having to perform as A Poet. The scribbles about life tend to be where the truth lives.
  
  I appreciate you taking the time not only to read but to reach out. It’s these exchanges that make sharing work online worthwhile – the sense of a conversation beginning rather than words simply disappearing into the void. I look forward to wandering through your writing and seeing how you capture the world and the people moving through it.
  
  Thank you again for your generous words, and for the invitation to your creative space.
  
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  1. Barnadhya Rwitam
    
    07/12/2025
    
    Thanks Bob, subscribed to your blog as well.
    
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subversopus

08/12/2025

That last stanza, is voila! Paradoxically…resolute, Good one!

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1. Bob Lynn
  
  08/12/2025
  
  Delighted you felt that paradox in the ending – holding closure and openness together was exactly the aim. Thank you for reading so thoughtfully and for capturing that tension so succinctly.
  
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