Memory

Your face has faded
Like my feelings for you
Has been squashed
In subconscious self-preservation

Lusting after your memory
Which I pillage with indecency
Scrutinising every scrap of it
To leave behind husks, picked clean

If I stop interfering
Perhaps you will seep back
Regenerate slowly to surprise me
With those smiles and sunny afternoons

Perhaps now it is too close for memories and,
Like your cigarette smoke in my hair
I will wake tomorrow and with the first breath
You will have returned, unbidden