Ruins

Do we really feel those memories? Are they remembered as they were?

Can one remember how sweet the sugar was, before it burned — all that’s left is powdery black soot!

Does the rubber tire wear its flattened grooves out of pride or self-contempt?

I honestly cannot remember where the road diverged, or even where the dust settled.

It was real, like breath, like life itself; yet the road is fleeting and the signs past are markers gone.

Was it the red sunset as we were driving south from the bay! No, i think we drove earlier in the day.

Can I remember that beaming of a smile, like morning light creeping through window shades.

Or rather cowls of anger, cries of broken promises, as the foundations fissured beneath what we made.

I cannot remember the good from the bad, or the man I was or at least tried to be. God, who was she!

Her face has faded too, like those white-dotted lines as they recede on the forgotten road, that road…

I remember only ruins, emptied and ground to flat; Dilapidated memories sit where love once sat!

Streets and back alleys, worn with cupid’s emptied clips; these sights of the past erode but time still persists.

The heart, once a prisoner, longing for letters or a visit— walks freely now as all tomorrows must insist.

And behind it are ruins, they are left to a past. I remember them sometimes, but memories go fast.