Who knew the past would follow us so far,
years collapsing like an ancient accordion,
scraps of memory tucked like torn photographs
into the sockets of our eyes?

Forget the dead, the past? O yet there are ghosts that may take revenge for it, memories that make the heart a tomb, regrets which gild thro’ the spirit’s gloom, and with ghastly whispers tell that joy, once lost, is pain.

Memory sometimes makes merciful deletions.

...the memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment..

[…] faded smiles oft linger in the face,
While grief's first flakes fall silent on the head!

mingling with the remains of the plane, equally fragmented, equally absurd, there floated the debris of the soul, broken memories, sloughed-off selves, severed mother tongues, violated privacies, untranslatable jokes, extinguished futures, lost loves, the forgotten meaning of hollow, booming words, land, belonging, home.

There's hope left in these dusty chords. There's a song left in our rusty hearts. We are torn and frayed but love remains.

Remember the splintered staccato
of bullets against rock, the way dust rose
in the stunned aftershock of silence?

something echoes
all forgotten dreams

The human race tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What's left of kisses? Wounds, however, leave scars.

Regret is a spiritual scar.

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.

While Memory watches o'er the sad review
Of joys that faded like the morning dew.

We need be careful how we deal with those about us, when every death carries to some small circle of survivors, thoughts of so much omitted, and so little done- of so many things forgotten, and so many more which might have been repaired! There is no remorse so deep as that which is unavailing; if we would be spared its tortures, let us remember this, in time.