Serious collector

Serious collector

If you can be brazen and apathetic
To someone you cared for,
Cried for and bled for
If you can walk around every day
Without giving them a moment of your thoughts
Or feeling a twinge of emotion at their memory
Can your heart be human -
True and actual?

When you held that hand
And squeezed it with some subliminal significance
Can you forget the shape of the fingers
Or the tenderness of the caress?

Once you've listened to that voice
Tell of all the joy and pain it could cry or sing
And have laughed together and screamed at each other
And finished one another's jokes
Can you pick up the phone one day
And ask Who is this?

Can your familiar one become so strange
You almost require an introduction...
Or is there a record kept
In the secret storehouses of your heart
That knows, knows, knows
Those lips
Those eyes
Those uncovered places
That were for you
A private garden?

Does the heart remember
What the mind may forget?

(c) Tasha Chinnock 2006