The Beauty of Abuse Amnesia

The fog of what never was
Rolls through the afternoon

The words she used
The gestures she made

My spellbound, powerless rage

It's as if all the thrusts
Were just defenses
With no need to justify now
When the silence is construed as peace

The smoke, though, never cleared

We were as armies called to command
By the orders themselves
Correcting each other in concentric circles
Thinking that any advantage gave power
Instead of more distance

And the reaching to understand
Only an offer of goodbye

I gave you what we shared
The sycamore trees
Greater for being lost to me

Your pictures from the trading post
At the continental divide
When you decided as the snow fell
That the rules didn't suit you
Arrived a century too late
With a last gasp postcard
Of what life could be
If unnamed mistakes weren't made
Decisions unwound
Visions unseen:
An endless ocean
With all the sand I gave you returned

As if with nothing there
I could find you

The thing that you withheld
Now real
Because the mind that created it
Finally believed
You were gone