Actual Life

I'd always believed that going back and being there again
would help fill the gaps.

That if I could stand in the same place and see it for myself,
as it is,
then I'd understand where it began
and might feel each of them begin to shrink.

Be it the grass that had crept between our toes,
the temperature of the waters sat upon it,
the scent of the coals, or the creak of the latch
—I'd wanted them to help me forget.

But then I was there.
I stood in the spot and felt for myself
the dried and bowing boards beneath my fingers and feet
—placed my eyes upon the site of the times
and felt their weights' failure in forcing an inelastic past to budge.

And with it, felt the success
of having reinserted myself into the setting
of one of the many moving pictures in my mind
serving only to push its filming further away
while drawing its effects that much closer.