You Don’t Come Back

You Don’t Come Back

 

Tried looking back, it always recedes,

and when he was young, he received

upon closing off her gritty bakelite set,

some sepia pictures sucked inwards

to become one white dot that blinked

then sunk. Or did it? So easy to forget.

Some small liquids seep from burette,

dripping recursive judgement’s light,

spotlight there, in black and white

your windmilling traveller, lost in time.

With passage, as we so often do,

he opened those same doors for you,

suggested you walk through them;

together to stand a fighting chance,

that it could be. It could be anything,

unconditional and that wedding ring;

some years ahead could joy still bring

and perhaps he saw you quickly glance.

But any mortar they crushed long ago,

to grind his peppers in twisting mills

until only specks fell from this world,

into vortices and maelstroms hurled,

so dizzy there amongst time’s draughts

you’d die, clinging to that ruined raft

for dear life. What’s ahead lay lines,

black striations leading to other times,

but each other bisects and intersects,

converging towards infinity of regret.

Call him back. That highwire hitchhiker

on threads that stretch across time’s loom.

You knew him. Almost since a womb

disgorged its bloody package into light,

day’s drawing curtains foretold the night.

You could call again; where’s the point?

Nothing left there of what once was,

just an eternity of perhaps and because,

a likeness only, a facsimile on black:

when you leave, you don’t come back.