Regret and the Question of Time Machines

I've got to cut these pathetic ties to maybe's and what if's and midnight city streets. All the water just flowed through the gutters that night and left the town where we were and into suburbs somewhere. Maybe I should have done that too, with these questions, with these words, with this ache. Just spat it all out into Northern Quarter grids and watched it disappear forever into the underground of my life. Because you weren't no saviour of my dreams like I thought, fuck, I don't even think you were human. I have to grant you just one little thing and that's the way you got me drunk from your eyes kind of saved me. The memories I'm left with of those green soul windows get me thinking of dragging on fags under star light. They get me thinking of brown pinstripe trousers, cut tight to the figure of early morning movies. They get me thinking of your naturist smile, bearing all but at the same time bearing nothing. They get me thinking of hard leather seats, leaning back and hiding my hands under the table. They get me thinking of America and the vastness of travel we planned over hills between seas. They get me thinking of petite, curving shoulders, of sinking clavicles and jet black nails. They get me thinking of flirting and laughing and you holding my hand and silence falling. They get me thinking your eyes filling up, saying why not me, why can't you be alone? But then I just wish that I'd done what I said, and spewed all this up in the gutters that night. Because that question, that teary eyed wish that you raised, it has no answer I can give to serve clarity to us both. One night I will go back to that street, to that bar, to that basement and stand under that light. I'll call you and say that I wish you were here, and I'm a writer, I'm a fraud, I'm a failure. I'll beg you to come, and if you do I'll hold you close, you can ask me again why not me, and I'll say, baby, it should be but for cowardice.