An Unregained Poem by Lonnie Hicks

I'm not remembering her;
chancing to meet.
we greet
synchronizing expressions
trying to collect
memory bits from the past
as to place
and circumstance.

The Universe between
the Not-Remembered and the Half-Forgotten,
is not joy, not pain,
not past, not present;
this is a small-talk world;
agenda-less.

We talk-
minutes going on-
both hoping
for memory to lurch
to the surface from our past
to penetrate to consciousness.

She, is someone I should know;
an old girl-friend or lover-foe?
Someone who loved me;
perhaps someone I had harmed?

Fumbling, I feint memory
hoping she’ll reveal who
I am
to her
and what had been
between she and I
and our last remembrances.

But she's neutral, not revealing much-
My blank stare frozen; still;
barriered from my own past.

I'm bereft
of attitude or anchoring,
and step away from this personal void;
memorylessness weakens me;
My tree has no branches.

But I see she knows now;
and I don't;
she in that instant
hides my own past from me
giving me no hint
as narrow-eyed we both squint
in morning light.

Now for me
the first memory bit
comes and then more of them;
ignited by her sad eyes.

I am to her the Forgiven One,
the one who did not love her
as she had loved me;
the one who loved not.

I am the Forgiven One
who had walked away
not seeing
the kindness she'd given me
of receiving from her love
that asked for nothing.

Sad are the eyes that remind
the Other was the person
who loved best.
Sad is the deadening spirit
of unrequited love's extent.


She said:
'You were loved far more
than you were able to give
and gifted
with more than you offered back.'

Piled high in her eyes
were all my regrets
un-intoned;
her love spilled by me
onto the Forgotten Floor.

After that time
I had taken her gift
and gave it to my next lover-
my atonement.

And she, too, similarly
had given me love that
she had deprived
from her previous lover.

We both walked away.
Sideswiped
by the Half-Forgotten and
the Unregained.