David Duchovny

Future Perfect

A sound (what is that?) reminds me

of (what? I don’t know). These days

there is so much familiarity with something

I have no experience of. Like the internets or

whatever. As if—

I passed you on 77th and Broadway

decades ago, and you smiled at me

for no (every) reason, laughed even,

then nothing (nothing?)

till now.

Et tu?

The future perfect,

insinuating into our momentarily

narrowed quotidian-like heavenly rust,

or a dumb hunch,

some beautiful-ass nonsense,

or the starting up again

of what has never been.

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Source: About Time: Poems (Akashic Books 2025)

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