Love Poem: Gone and (Almost) Forgotten ......
Helen J Radford Avatar
Written by: Helen J Radford

Gone and (Almost) Forgotten ......

Lamentation for what you are losing. 
A situation not of your choosing. 
Powerless in its execution. 
Watching from the shadows as 
the scene unfolds before you. 

A bag of broken promises 
standing in the corner - waiting 
for recycling or incineration - 
no-one knows, but gone for ever 
in the familiar form you knew. 

Your heart lies broken in the dustpan. 
A few fragments scattered on the floor. 
She tries to sweep them up, but carelessly 
drops the container in transit and curses 
as it leaves a dust trail to the door. 

How cold she looks.  Her face fixed in 
resolution.  Determined to get the rooms 
of her life scrubbed clean and free from 
memories of you.  Reminders of you two 
as you were, happy once, laughing, loving. 

Out to the trash wagon goes your world. 
With no knowledge of the significance, 
it is tipped in ignorance into the swirling, 
churning lumber of the neighbourhood, 
and ground to meaningless pulp. 

She stops on the way to retrieve a minute 
piece of hope deposited on her shoe - 
stuck like gum and adhering to the pavement 
as she walks.  A good tug and it is gone, but 
she tuts as it leaves stickiness on her fingers. 

Back in the sanitized emptiness 
she pauses to view her clean slate. 
Still icy in her survey, she doesn't notice broken you, 
forgotten in the cupboard - heart ripped out, 
memory mutilated, living only in the shadows. 

The door creaks and she is alerted, 
she quickly runs to close it - crisis averted. 
Must get a lock for that door 
and throw away the key - 
the heart can't grieve if the eye can't see.