Old Flames

When they left, or I did,
my mind fixed them as engrams,
a kind of photograph
that captured face, figure,
the lilt of their voice, the brush
of their lips on my shoulder,
that of my lips on their warm skin.
They are always nineteen
or forty-three or somewhere
past fifty, and though I age,
they stay paired with the me
who was twenty or thirty-seven
or simply somewhere past.

Our love still exists, even
if encapsulated like an exhibit
in a natural history museum;
on lonely evenings I can stroll by the case
each inhabits in my memories,
read the curator's explanatory card
and marvel at the lost beauty
that they built in my history—
something amazing like Persepolis
or Thebes, but long deceased.

Old flames—the fire of our love
now rendered mere ash.
I occasionally sift the remains
for the odd artifact (a flint arrowhead,
a pottery shard) that hasn't completely
been ground to dust in my memories.