On: the photos covering the walls of my apartment, and the past loves that live just outside the frame.

We all have the photos that we can’t bear to take down but are stained with one person or another; let them be stained no more:

Just because
they were there
doesn’t mean
I wasn’t there, too.

Does not make my
time in that place
less valid,
or significant.

Not the swamp,
or the ocean,
or the forest:
I was there.

I can pluck you out
of the memory like
a little kid perfecting
the art of Operation.

Shakily. Without
warning it completely fails,
and I have to start over;
the shock hits different

as an adult,
the lessons are
more nuanced,
harder

to catch
and hold on to
because:
the pain is

sometimes
all we
think we
have.

..

But I urge you,
remember: Their
existence does not make
Yours, less;

Your time,
less; Your
words, less.
It simply

insists you
choke on them.
But remember
to chew, and

remember your
training, and you can,
(*deep breath*),
zzzz,

Pluck
someone
out of a memory,
just like that;

Not to say
you will never see them
standing just out of
frame again–

just to say
Your Existence there
is the same
as now:

Inside Yourself,
not within them.
Not the same as now:
You Have Learned.

Think of all You
know now, all that
the You in that photo
did not know: new memories

pluck old ones,
You remember it as
a lesson in happy,
in the heart, in letting go.

You smile
fondly
gazing upon
the swamp,

and
the ocean,
and
the forest,

as you
have
taken them
all on,

and lived
to put the photos
on your
walls.