What do you do with gifts from ex lovers
I have a drawer full of
Letters and gifts
From people whom I once loved
And lost.
Chits and tickets
I saved from years ago,
Things untouched
Letters unread
Since the day they left
Since the day I left.
Some nights I sit amongst them
And the spaces between the words
They once wrote
For me,
With love.
I won’t lie,
I did burn some of them.
To cease the pain
But I tucked away the rest
To feel the long-lost love,
all over again.
There’s something about bygones;
They eulogize love,
And turn it into poetry.
Singing songs sung by tone-deaf idiots in love.
There’s something about bygones;
They remain etched within us-
Finding spaces to breathe
Between the broken pieces,
stuck together loosely
with cheap glue.
We all hold on to love
if not the lovers.
The boy I love
Wears a locket around his neck,
Which pulls a string within his heart
Each time I tug on it to pull him close.
Papa has a book hidden
Amongst his box of things from 1985.
It’s not that Ma doesn’t know
But she never says anything.
Never has and probably never will.
Some nights I play my uke,
Pulling loose strings from the past
Of days I barely remember
And struggle to reminisce.
Yet still hold on
To the bits and the pieces.
Yet still hold on
To the memories and the objects.
What does one do
With the gifts from ex lovers?
Do you burn them away ?
To let go of people who stole your smile
And ran far away into nothingness?
Do you flush them down the memory lane ?
To escape the memories that left a human sized hole
In your universe, your heart?
Do you cling on to them ?
As souvenirs from happier times
Do you use them as a subtle reminder?
Of moments that once made you smile
Of moments that made your heart skip a beat for a while?
What does one do
With gifts from ex lovers?
I guess no one knows the answer yet.
We let people go
But hold on to mere objects-
They leave behind.
Except somehow these aren’t just mere objects.
It’s like a piece of their heart
Entangled to a piece of ours.
And we keep these pieces safe within us
And hold on to them
For the sake of love-
That once made us feel alive.
We hold on to them
For the sake of hope-
That someone will come by
And make us feel alive again.
Until they leave
Adding to the catalog of souvenirs
That forever remain.
