What Burns Sometimes Returns

A lifetime of control
That bears the weight of a sixteen year-old girl,
Lighting up against her parent’s wishes
On her best friend’s porch,
In dead light you called dead
But in truth can’t recall

The more you turn over a coin
The more it fades,
And no-one can stop you putting one away.
And in fact it could be said to work both ways.
So you will paint pictures of horses
And that will be that.

But she will come back.

An impression on a face at first,
And then stood there silent in the curve
Of your room,
Half hidden in the dark,
Borne of repetition buried deep in waking hands:

A sixteen year-old girl and a half-finished beer;
Red with wounded pride
On the night of a fire.

And what of your tiny Nova,
Broken down into scrap all those years after you sold her,
(That broke down every week without fail)
Driven away without much of a thought;
The memory of which
All you have left
To shield from a lifetime of remembering