Before The After

By John Grey

--

Can my heart be a guide to old kisses,

a trip-tik through time, first names and nights,

a stash of intimacy so potent,

it takes a memory to hold it in?

Why keep a moment in mothballs,

a sigh in a suitcase,

a moan in a decades-old moon?

Must it single out this dawn or that one?

Can only the survivor claim it all?

I've been with you forever it seems

but everlasting has a starting point.

And before then? To you, the abyss.

To me, moments of extraordinary bliss.

I haven't mentioned love,

that inveterate scene stealer.

Teenage, adolescence, coming of age...

its presence is unquestioned.

Only its depth is debatable.

Think of past romance as the mulch,

the roots, the fertilizer,

that makes all of this possible.

We're full blooming roses most of the time.

Where's the harm in digging in my dirt?