Past Memories are a Poor Impression of a Stranger

The only photo I have of you

is mental and untrue,

if every time our memories surface

a piece of you is warped for nostalgia’s sake

eventually, there will be a stranger in my head.

I am the world’s biggest hypocrite

I begged you to be Orpheus if he had more self-discipline

yet here I am, fingers curled around knowledge already known

consequences already laid out, folded

into neat little piles-

a ritual performed with the righteousness

of doing laundry on a Sunday.

But, if the lover in my head is now fiction

there are no domestics;

the laundry machine caught fire

and flames devoured everything we could have claimed to be.

I am coming around to the idea

I miss a thing I never really had.

I have been a surf instructor in NZ, pulled an 'into the wild' and now volunteering in the USA