Regret and the Past
Nothing haunts a person quite
like the past-it has a certain resonance,
you know? It finds me wherever I am,
whispering from a box on my shelf,
buzzing from an old electronic journal,
ringing and echoing down the caverns
of time and memory like a phone call
vaguely remembered but earnestly
felt. It sneaks up on me in the dark
when I am hard at work being who
I am now and forsaking-with supposed
good reason-who I used to be. It comes
to me in my dreams when I'm simply
trying to muster up enough of whatever
it is that keeps me going day to day; it
announces itself like a princess, but, unlike
Cinderella, refuses to leave. Uncanny.
It is late nights when I remember an old friend
who I know I no longer know and who no
longer knows me-a friend with which I vowed
a friendship for life.
Oh, how these vows fall by
the wayside when it is so much easier to forget.
“Who I am now is not congruent with who I was.”
This is never enough.
It takes a certain courage,
too, to open communications again, like using a
limb of old injury, like ripping off a scab and
watching the blood ooze down to something
we may still have in common.
I have lived long enough. Long enough to know
that the past is a fickle illusion; long enough to
know better than to expect to return to a person
as if they are exempt from time and experience,
as if the difference imagined is not unlike the
difference achieved. It is sorrow to forget,
and sorrow to know they have forgotten me.
How many people have I known
and abandoned to time? How can I believe it
won't happen again? Is all love doomed
to such inconstant vanity?
like the past-it has a certain resonance,
you know? It finds me wherever I am,
whispering from a box on my shelf,
buzzing from an old electronic journal,
ringing and echoing down the caverns
of time and memory like a phone call
vaguely remembered but earnestly
felt. It sneaks up on me in the dark
when I am hard at work being who
I am now and forsaking-with supposed
good reason-who I used to be. It comes
to me in my dreams when I'm simply
trying to muster up enough of whatever
it is that keeps me going day to day; it
announces itself like a princess, but, unlike
Cinderella, refuses to leave. Uncanny.
It is late nights when I remember an old friend
who I know I no longer know and who no
longer knows me-a friend with which I vowed
a friendship for life.
Oh, how these vows fall by
the wayside when it is so much easier to forget.
“Who I am now is not congruent with who I was.”
This is never enough.
It takes a certain courage,
too, to open communications again, like using a
limb of old injury, like ripping off a scab and
watching the blood ooze down to something
we may still have in common.
I have lived long enough. Long enough to know
that the past is a fickle illusion; long enough to
know better than to expect to return to a person
as if they are exempt from time and experience,
as if the difference imagined is not unlike the
difference achieved. It is sorrow to forget,
and sorrow to know they have forgotten me.
How many people have I known
and abandoned to time? How can I believe it
won't happen again? Is all love doomed
to such inconstant vanity?