I can imagine my own life twisted

through a hundred iterations

spilled through the sieve

of a single weighty choice.

I can imagine a thousand fates 

befalling our nation, 

tomorrow, the next day, and the next,

but whenever I try to mold my life around you

and the future that flows from you,

I see only shades of the past.

Some individuals picture nothing

when given a word or an idea to mull over,

yet my visualizations only help me

when I need to be somewhere else,

focusing on something else.

What does it mean 

that I cannot imagine

a future with both of us in it?

Is it brain damage? Or naïveté?

Or some vengeful dented destiny?

I like to imagine, deeper than dreaming,

that my source of missing mental material

derives from the fact 

that I have not yet met you,

so I cannot envision 

what our lives would be like together.

If that is aphantasia,

then I will sit with my own madness 

until you fill it.