Pastures New

I found a picture of you today
a sudden, faded pocket of blue.
It is a heavy thing, how love moves on
while the ghost of it demands its due.

I found a picture of you, and smiled
at the giggling corners, the shared glances,
smirking together at a friend’s wild hair.
Just fragments of a younger sky,
safe to look at now without despair.

But the lens clears when I look close.
The old bruising starts to speak
how you held me back, a selfish thief,
treating my heart like a casual dessert.
You taught me a bitter lesson, then left,
leaving me stranded in the dirt.

But look at the ground I have broken since.
The brutal schooling of our affair
forced me to till a different soil.
I learned the boundary of when to care,
how to root deeply into my own skin,
with plenty of love still left to spare.

I hold this picture of you now
and see only a hollow, faded view.
You are still frozen inside the frame
while I have walked out,
into pastures new.