"Ghost of Marriage Past"

“Ghost of Marriage Past”



Spring cleaning early
I come across
a cobwebbed album
shuttered frames of
happiness, hopes
dreams in the making
Aged innocence captured
on Kodak paper
4x6 glossies reflecting
oft used emotions
Life’s positives
from negatives
flashbulb yesteryears
cuddling,
coddling,
caressing
hearts’ confessions
whispered in
a shared bed
of shared tomorrows

Some tomorrows never come.

Vintage pages of
jaundiced subjects;
burnt umber edges
arching back with
dormant stiffness;
hunching over
in arthritic spasms;
misaligned tabbed corners
their culprits’ crippled blame.
Yet familiar faces still...
Blue eyes hemorrhaged red;
flash induced tapestry images
bleeding to opaqueness tint
myopic visions blurred
to anemic distress
Yet within the weak
and bleak collage
stand two straight and strong.


can’t quite make out these next...
it’s been so many years between...
no...wait...
sadly,
I recognize them now.

Faith’s accused of
jumped conclusions;
double exposures
to jealousy’s
mottled wrath
in
dark
darker
in darkest room
and gloom developed
and hung to dry in
dimming light of trust

restoring nothing
salvaging even less

Vividly transparent
these last few scenes...
forced unbroken smiles
and unforced bruising tears;
backgrounds clashing
in hushed shades
of an undeserved pallor
and pale concern

vaguely wanting
hardly needing

barely mourning love.

A door slams
and I blink;
my book of revelations
lying in my lap.
its dust, not I, undisturbed.

Clawed etchings
drawn in and
from my mind
reminding me
haunting me
hurling me
into a dead lifetime ago
exhuming regrets as
I resurrect still
this spousal apparition