Artifacts (Poem)

I

These things I have carried:
       gifts the givers have forgotten they'd given;
             not words
             nor memories
             nor the brush of a hand against skin, but

Artifacts:
       letters, a drawing done in pen:
             faded thoughts of love
             (if they could only read them now)
       footprints in wet concrete,
             long since dried and cracked

Children speak of forever
        though they cannot comprehend it

        "I will love you always, forever."
             (if they could have only known what vows they would make but a few short months later)

It makes me sad:
        I miss the man they hoped I was.


II

And yet:
       And yet I remember so coldly clear
               how badly I wished to escape him
                      at the time

       I remember the words and the brushes of hands
               against skin as if called over a shoulder
                       while running to catch the bus

He was never a man I wished to be.

In fact, I'm now more the man I dreamt of
       than ever as a child

But of those vows, those transparent confessions and transcripts
       of a heart's content's source:
              they are now only artifacts.