person from the past

so can you ever be free from
those whom you thought you
did your best to leave in the
past?
certainly only senility may be
compassionate enough to
wipe the slate clean,
but what about those who have
gone, or who were shoved off
by you yourself,
in a moment of weakness,
in a moment of hopelessness,
in a moment of passionate
youthful
dismay,
all knotted up like stressed-out
muscles?
for we both know,
you & i,
that there are no second chances in
this thing &
we will all be dead so fast
that to cling onto something so far
gone,
seems so irrelevant now,
but in the moments of deepest
depression,
in the moments of aging bewilderment,
further stress & illness,
all those who revealed themselves
to be sympathetic to our cause,
to be
nice to us, in the very least,
come pulsating vibrantly to the
forefront of the mind &
when we reach out with our
fingertips,
needing to speak only a few words,
needing to make some sort of
connection
with someone with whom we
thought we had done something
right,
in the midst of this horribly indifferent
&
utterly brief
ridiculousness,
we’d be lucky to hold that dream in the
recesses for more than a couple minutes
after waking up in the
morning.