I no longer have any photographs
of you.
I tore them into tiny shreds
of colored paper
and set them ablaze...
The fire I hoped,
somehow consuming
the fire that had burned me...
Cauterizing the wound
Allegorically.

It was a psychological
prescription for a pain
that was deeper
than the psyche...
Like a bandaid
applied to a compound fracture,
But it was a beginning.

The catharsis will come, I think,
only when the memories themselves
rise in smoke.
The memories still haunt me.

And you...
like a ghost...
occassionally still appear
on my horizon.
I see you
still living your life
going on with it as though
nothing ever happened...
as though you never even knew me.
It is like salt being rubbed into the burn.

Eventually when one feels
enough pain
the body (or heart) goes into shock.
A welcome numbness comes.

Perhaps that numbness
Is what I am striving for...seeing you.
Yet even when the healing is complete...
the scar tissue will remain
and I will never be rid
of the evidence

that I loved you.

ŠL. A. Hutcherson 1998