Working Title:
I trust
memory's cruelty to carry us on to the end
I've had enough of old lovers.
They come, and then they go,
rubbing up against your leg
until you tell them
to just get off.
It's the old haters I want to hear about.
You search the dark, low-res photos
for clues to the source of dissension,
for the lines not yet on their faces.
We all grow old
and some of us grow up.
But you're still drunk and seventeen in their minds,
and they are still twelve in yours,
performing alchemy in your heart:
turning youthful love to acrimony
with a careful construction
to come painfully true in future years.
How do you do it?
Do you wish them ill,
secrety laugh at their misfortune,
while pretending to feel for them?
Do you hope they are better now,
that their childish churlishness has matured away?
Do you hear of them somewhere,
and feel a moment of swelling pride,
before it's replaced with bitter memory
of how that moment ended?
How do you forgive the moment of truth,
the revealing of the crushing lie,
when you are found wanting and cast away?
I trust memory's cruelty to carry us on to the end. |