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I Don’t Wish to be Friends with the Past (National Poetry Month)

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unsplash-logoJonathan Bowers

I don’t wish to be friends with the past
Tis like tiptoeing through a graveyard of broken headstones
crumbling
Where sculpted angels with folded wings weep
And forgotten crypts lay dark

I’ve grown, and changed, and got older
While yet the lay still where I left them
In the same spot, the same plots and stories to tell

I visit from time to time, in my thoughts and in my mind
But I try not to linger, though fondness begs me to stay
To touch the faces of my beloveds like I used to
In the past where they lay

But all my fingers do as I brush their hair back
Is pass through without moving a single strand
For one cannot touch what used to be
The way it used to be
And here, I am the ghost wandering

I’ve known lovers, and I can still in mind trace the peculiarity of their bodies with my lips
But there is no memory in the way they feel any more
Not their hands
Not their hips

No, I don’t wish to be friends with the past
Though occasionally I return
To walk amongst what might have beens
Before my soul remembers what is touchable here and now