Former Lovers

What space do they occupy in our minds?  How does it work?

I have one in mind.  I have this anesthetized feeling toward her, that, I'm sure, isn't somehow my real accurate feeling.  And yet, it persists, a hammer wrapped in cloth.  It will still break the window, wont' it, if I swing?  It will still hurt its owner?  Won't it?  I don't know.  I've wrapped it up with a lot of cloth, mind you, quite thick, in woolens and sheets and strips and shards of those things best left to whimsy of nostalgic meandering, and I find it sick and both convenient and repulsive now, the way it is, and yet.

I can't quite touch it.

Damn it.

I want to touch it.

I mean that sincerely.  I want the crystal clean memories of yesteryear, to live through them at times in a way that won't be wholly cathartic, in a way that won't be fully punishing, but instead fractionally cathartic and punishing, and unlike a walk in the park, it will reach into me and tell me that I am alive because I know what mistakes mean and that I'm alive because I know where I was and where I was, it was fundamentally flawed in a way that is irreparable now, and so, must be wrapped every so tightly, except that I long to flail flawed markers around and just relish in it, you know, the imperfection, the subtlety and the numerosity of imperfect existence, crystallized and sweet on a sunny day just like any other.