I saw you
and walked away.
Ran as if my life
depended on it.
I wish I hadn’t
now;
in retrospect
I could never bear
the thought of hurting you.
I was lost
and far away.
Losing was my only gain.
Thinking back
from where I am
these days,
I can’t help but feel
Regret’s hooks
sinking in.
You were my first
in many ways;
not all the garden variety ones,
but the cut-deep,
leave marks on your bones, ones.
Yeah,
it was like that.
I was on self-destructive streets;
Ragged man,
burning my last infatuation,
when I heard
that old, familiar footfall
on a crowded sidewalk.
The footsteps
of a painful memory.
In many ways,
it was you I was escaping,
but I trapped myself,
I can see that now.
I watched
out my window,
waiting for your wraith to pass,
but it never did
and I wept.
Maybe you were never there.
part of me thinks
you were long gone by then
and what I saw behind me
was an apparition,
some savage memory
pushing me into madness.
All that I know,
is that the pain of those days lessened,
but there are some old wounds
that don’t take much to re-open.
I never meant to run
from your ghost,
I had no choice,
there were too many demons already
in those days.
If I hurt you
and I know I did,
know that I’m sorry
and that our encounter
on that street
sits among my long list of regrets;
my sin collection,
that I will have to take account for.
On the day
that I meet Heaven
on the road,
I will remember this
and I will turn
and say “Hello”.
HG – 2017
