Poetry

"The Things We Carry, Carry Us Through"

Why do I return
To a place
So rot with memories
Happy as they may be
In that moment
Frozen in my mind
As a time for you and I

Now these singular moments
Add up to dread
Only a single man could define
After holding you
On the rocks
After kissing you
As the sun set
After walking with you
Our toes in the dry, hot sand
After making love to you
As only young lovers do

Is it safe to say
You have become
The bane of my existence
The reason I'm incapable of feeling
Because of those memories
I try to remember only the good times
Or is that placing too much importance
On who you were to me
Who were you to me
When in reality
This fog has clouded my vision
My path of least resistance
When it comes to meeting a girl
Who would far surpass
The standards and measurements
I held you up to

I want the chance
To get to know
Another lover
The way I knew you
The way we knew each other
For it was in your laugh
Your smile, your come-hither-stare
That I fell in love
Deeper than I thought imaginable
I fell so hard
That I've spent years in recovery
And some might say
It's time to move on
To remove you from the pedestal
That no one can be so destroyed
By one love, as me
Unless it was first love

When your touch made me
Weak in the knees
And we both knew each other's bodies
Like the sea
Or a map
Where I was the X
And you, you were the X
And we both reached the treasure
Simultaneously

So why do I return
To the place
That only evokes sweet memories
Of you. Of you and me
Maybe it's to remind myself
That the pain's worth it
That a woman is worth the wait
And that true love exists
Even if, for a brief momentary lapse of reason
There is a reason in this great debate
Called love (or has it transgressed to hate)
When I can never despise you
For what you made me
Because I know now
That I'm destined for something great
Something better than what we had
If what we had was the bar
To which I've measured other girls
Than it's time to set the bar higher
For I have let others
Come and go, go and come
Thinking "they're not you"
But now I know
They will never be...you
And that's why
I should take the time
To know each one, intimately
If not over drinks
Then maybe as we lay in the sand
On the beach
Where we first made sweet memories
I'll take their hands
And make new memories
In this blessed sand
To repeat every new year

When the urgency strikes me
To remember you
I'll drive out to the ocean
Where we shared our first "I love you's"
And instead of being erased
My memories of you will simply be replaced
By the girls
I've gotten to know
In the years since you and i
And a promised
Died, there.