An accumulation of faltering beginnings-
A drawer full of inked pages,
Torn and ripped and torn again.
A methodical preservation
Of the scattered relics
Of a past hastily buried
Into the comforting haze
Of far too many interminable summers.
Could they ever last long enough?
An incomplete, gnawing desire
To revisit a memory no longer haunting
The place it belonged to.
Memories wiped clean so meticulously,
That they can barely be heard whispering over balconies
On odd, sunny days.
‘Can you hear me now?’
A name, a name, just a name.
Can plaster and paint and a series
Of indifferent portraits, faces blurring into one,
Cover the forgotten caresses of your fingerprints?
Can all these expansive catalogues
Of the things you loved,
Of the things you would’ve grown to love
Resurrect you?
Tattered sheets glued down
To form a jigsaw puzzle of ‘maybe’s.
A desperate inversion of conclusive endings,
And a need for self preservation
Through you.
